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THE LAND 



OF 



RIP VAN WINKLE 



THE LAND 



RIP VAN WINKLE 



A TOUR THROUGH THE ROMANTIC PARTS OF 
THE CATSKILLS 



ITS LEGENDS AND TRADITIONS 



A. E. P. SEARING 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS V.Y 

JOSEPH LAUBER, CHARLES VOLKMAR, AND OTHERS 

ENGRAVED BY E. HEINEMANN 



NEW YORK & LONDON 

G. r. PUTNAM'S SONS 

Cljc .Iinichcvbocl;ci- press 

1884 






COPYRIGHT BY 

E. HEIN'EMANN 
1SS4 



l(n\^U 



Press of 

G. P. Pitnam's Sons 

New York 




Should you as.k nic ichcncc these star 
Whence these Ico-ends and traditions. 



ics. 



" I should anszvcr, I should ted you : 
" ' From the forests and the prairies, 



' ' Front the mountains, moors, and fcnla?uls, 

' ' J I 'here the heron, the shuh-shiiJi-gaii, 

' ' Feeds among the reeds and rushes. 

' ' I repeat them as I heard them 

' ' From the lips cf N'aioadaha, 

' ' The musician, the szoeet singer.' 

' Should you ash ivhere A'azuadaha 

' Found these songs, so i^'ild and zi<ayivard, 

' Found these legends and ti ad it ions, 

■ / should ans7i'cr, I should tell you : 

■ ' /n the birds' -nests of the forest, 
' In the lodges of the heaver, 

' In the hoof -prints of the bison, 
■ ' In the eyry of the eagle /' " 



Longfellow. 




CONTENTS. 



TiiK Land of Rip Van Wixklk 

Tin: I'lKATKs' Treasure 

The Birth of the Kaaterskili, 

Revolutionary Captivities 

Haidoni and the VA-MPVRES 

The Grot Vlv's Victim 

The Legend of Rip Van Winkle 



I 

4 
50 

65 

96 

112 

129 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Panorama from the Overlook 

Ox Deck of Steamer .... 

Capt. Kidu axi) Gov. Fletcher 

Old Woollen Mill at Palenville 

View from Prospect Rock — Kaaterskill F 

Fawx's Leap 

View from the Toll-House at Palexville 
On the Esopus, near Phcenicia 

On Catskill Creek 

Rip Van Winkle House .... 

The Old German 

View from North Mountain . 

The Dude 

On the Road from Kaaterskill Hotel 
View from Sunset Rock .... 

Alligator Rock 

The Lakes 

Sheltering Rock 

In Cauterskill Clove, after Rain 
Artist Rock and Palenville Overlook 
Marv's Glen, xear Laurel House 
Ox Top of Haixes' Falls . 
Drippixg Rock .... 
Haixes' Falls .... 
Artist Grotto .... 
The Cascades of Haixes' Falls 

xi 



\LLS 



Frontispiece 

3 

5 

15 

17 

19 
21 

27 

29 

31 
32 
33 
34 

35 

n 
38 

39 
40 

41 

42 
43 
45 
46 

47 
48 

49 



xu 



LIST OF ILLUSTRA TIONS. 



Land Slide on Top ok Cauterskill Clove 

Belle Falls at Palenville 

Delaware Vallev 

The Maid in Kaaterskill Fall 

George Hall's House 

Dog's Hole, Palenville 

Profile Rock .... 

Climbing up — Palenville Overlook 

Views in" Stony Clove 

Gloomy Pool Beyond the Notch 

Farm-House near Pikenicia 

Dominie's Face .... 

Echo Lake 

Vampyre's Den, and De.\th hf Stoxk Gian 

Pilgrim's Pass .... 

Turtle Rock .... 

Before Old Mount House 

Styles Gorge .\nd Pulpit Rock 

Poet's Bench — Overlook . 

Lover's Retreat — Overlook 

Bowling 

Overlook Pl.wground 

Boy Artist 

Black Chasm .... 
Terrace Y\\.\,, Plattekill 
The Hell Hole .... 
Plattekill Clove 



51 
53 
57 
59 
65 
67 

75 
83 
89 
90 

91 

93 
94 
96 

99 
100 

lOI 

102 

'03 
104 
105 
106 
107 
108 
109 
1 10 
III 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



It was in September, not very long ago, that seven wise peo- 
ple resolved to leave the parching, blistering heat that was des- 
olating New York — that hottest of cities — and to sail away to seek 
a land of cool breezes and sweet odors. Moreover, it must be 
some region with an atmosphere of romance to suit the Literary 
Fellow ; it must furnish specimens for the Botanical Member of the 
expedition, and sketching ground for the Artist. 

The Catskills, of course ! 

There were Mr. and Mrs. Schuyler, of Washington Square — 
she a prett)', well-bred woman of no particular age; he — well, he is 
Mrs. Schuyler's elderly husband. Then there was that pretty Miss 
Perkins, whose lance was always poised awaiting the uncovering 
of some luckless wight's weak or wicked spot, when ping ! it flew 
straight to the vital point, and the victim was generally content to 
retreat and nurse his wound. As for the third lady of the party, 
it was enough for her that she was known as " that elegant Miss 
Rutherford," and her principal occupation was to go about attend- 
ing to the wounded that pretty Polly Perkins left in the rear. The 
person most often in need of such consolation was Captain Old- 
bore, who had started on this trip with a goodly store of facts 
wherewith to instruct his fellow-travellers ; practical, verified 
history those facts were, and he did not propose to allow the Artist 



2 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

or tlu: Literary Fellow to spoil them with a false glamour of romance. 
His theory was that history was in some sort a sacred charge, 
and it was every man's duty to keep fiction from usurping its 
place. Traditions were pernicious till authenticated, and the 
man most to be respected was the conscientious, truth-seeking 
antiquary. 

Now Miss Polly Perkins cherished an ill-concealed contempt 
for such dry-as-dust reminiscence, and had a great weakness for 
the tales of by-gone days that John Grant, the Literary Fellow, had 
always at hand. 

So one morning they all sailed away on the deck of a day- 
boat for Catskill. For a while the talk was all of routes and hotels 
until a decision was at last reached as to how much time to give to 
each part of the mountains. Then ensued a roll-call of baskets 
and umbrellas and sketching tools and other impedimenta. At last 
they settled themselves down to find they were approaching the 
Highlands, where a pulsing haze of noon-day heat covered those 
towering hillsides. 

" How beautiful ! " murmured Miss Rutherford. 

" Light 's too strong," objected the Artist. " You should see 
them by moonlight, or later in the day, or in the early morning. 
They need a slanting light on them, they bear no shadows now," 
and with a comprehensive wave of his hand he dashed them out of 
the canvas, and painted them in over again. 

Then the Literary Fellow took it up. 

" And yet they need a haze over them ; they are never perfect 
without that characteristic mantle. They are loveliest in October, 
when Indian summer glorifies them ; then they always remind me 
of Captain Kidd, and those old legends." 

" Yes? " interroeated Miss Rutherford; •■ I did not know the 
doughty old fellow's ghost prowled about here." 



THE LAXD OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 3 

" Oh ! but he did come here," broke in the Artist. " Now, no 
doubt John there has a yarn about it." 

The person thus referred to sat meditatively nursing his cane, 
with a tar-away look in his eyes that promised a story. Miss Polly 
sat apart a little, where the wind was blowing her ribbons and 




OK DECK OF SIEAMER. 



love-locks all about her face. Some of the conversation had reached 
her ears, for at this point she left her seat, casting a side-glance at 
Captain Oldbore, to make sure that he would not disturb the prom- 
ised tale with cynical criticism. But there was no need for fear ; 
the old gentleman was deeply engaged at the moment with his his- 
torical facts, possibly " chewing a cud of erudite mistake " about 



4 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

Revolutionary affairs. All things looked encouraging as she came 
forward, singing softly : 

" Oh, my name was Captain Kidd, as I sail'd, as I sail'd ! " 

" Do you know the rest of it ? " asks the Literary Fellow, and 
she finishes : 

" Oh, my name was Captain Kidd, as I sail'd, as I sail'd •, 
Oh, my name was Captain Kidd as I sail'd. 
My sinful footsteps slid ; God's law they did forbid ; 
But still wickedly I did, as I sail'd. 

" I 'd a Bible in my hand when I sail'd, when I sail'd ; 
I 'd a Bible in my hand when I sail'd ; 
I 'd a Bible in my hand, by my father's great command, 
And I sunk it in the sand, when I sail'd. 

"I spied three ships of France as I sail'd, as I sail'd ; 
I spied three ships of France as I sail'd ; 
I spied three ships of France ; to them I did advance, 
And took them all by chance, as I sail'd. 

" I 'd ninety bars of gold, as I sail'd, as I sail'd ; 
I 'd ninety bars of gold, as I sail'd ; 
I 'd dollars manifold, and riches uncontrolled, 
And by these I lost my soul, as I sail'd." 

Mr. Grant fixed his gaze on the passing shore as if reading his 
legend on the green slopes, and told the story given below. After- 
ward it was published in the Era, and furnished food for many a 
Captain Oldbore's historical rage. I give it as it was given to the 
Era. 

THE PIRATE'S TREASURE. 

In one of the old colonial mansions of New York, facing on 
the Battery, two men sat at a table drinking. The firelight, flaring 
up about the great log in the chimney, cast fitful gleams on their 
differing faces. The elder of the two. Colonel Fletcher, ex-Gov- 
ernor of the province of New York, was a man past middle life, 



THE LAND OF RIP VAX IVIXKLE. 5 

thin and dry, with a sharp-cut, beardless countenance, in which 
were set two Httle bead-hke eyes that seemed ever wandering in 
search of evil things. Their expression belied all the suavity of the 
man's face and manner ; they told you that their owner was cog- 
nizant of all your weakness, and perhaps of many of your pecca- 
dilloes, should you conduct yourself never so discreetly, and at 
some unwary moment you might find yourself in his unmerciful 
clutches. His powdered peruke was arranged with the same fas- 
tidious care that evinced itself in the disposition of the rich lace 




CAPT. KIDD AND GOV. FLETCHER. 



framing his slender, aristocratic hands. His entire person bespoke 
a taste and elegance hardly removed trom foppery, from his red 
velvet coat, parting in front to reveal the deep lace frill on his 
bosom, to the gold buckles on his shoes and at his knees. His 
companion was a man of quite another stamp, and something in 
his attitude as he sat with crossed knees and back half turned, 
looking toward his friend only when he spoke, betokened a certain 
scorn of Fletcher's foppery and ill-concealed meanness. The older 



6 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

man was leaning forward with folded arms resting on the polished 
mahogany of the table, keenly eying the large bulk of his guest, 
as if weighing the truth of the marvellous tale he had just heard. 

Of tall and finely developed figure, our hero was clothed in 
some dun-colored vesture, without ornament save his decorated 
sword of Moorish make, and the sash which held it at his waist. 
This was of a deep- red color, and of soft silken mesh, with two 
tassels at the end. His hair was brown and unpowdered, contrary 
to the prevailing fashion, and cropped closely to his head, where 
it clung in little rings. He wore long mustachios, curling up at 
the ends like a Spaniard's, and his complexion was swarthy as if 
browned by foreign suns, while his eyes of light gray had the ab- 
sent unseeing expression that so olten characterizes a person of 
minute observation. Suddenly turning to his companion, he let 
his fist come down on the table, so that the glasses rung, swearing 
a round oath, and concluding his malediction in some foreign 
tongue. 

" I tell ye, 't is a mighty treasure," he went on in tones of sup- 
pressed excitement, " a Moorish merchantman bound home from 
India, and richly laden, as ye may guess, with what ye already 
know of such-like cargoes ! " 

At this insinuation Colonel Fletcher stirred uneasily, and re- 
moving his eyes from the swarthy face now turned to him, gazed 
into the fire. Whether he saw there visions of gold and silver 
and precious stuffs, or some new plan to help him out of his diffi- 
cult situation, I do not know, but presently he stole a sly glance at 
the now averted face before him. 

" But, Bellomont ," he said softly. 

The eyes flashed round in sovereign contempt. " A fig for your 
Bellomont ! I snap my fingers ! Those six fine rubies I sent to her 
ladyship, the countess, have whetted his appetite, and what though 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 7 

he thundered and fumed and cast me in prison ? Here I am, out 
on some Himsy pardon, and those pretty baubles in his wife's jewel- 
casket have changed my title from 'pirate' to 'privateer in His Ma- 
jesty's service.' And yet I tell ye he '11 scarce dare to let me pass 
in openly with my sloop-loads of treasure, much less let me brino- 
that great ship here in open sight. That troublesome make- mischief 
of a Robert Livingstone too — may the Devil fly away with him! — is 
growing suspicious, and must needs come posting down from his 
manor to see what the Earl of Bellomont means by liberating me. 
But leave that to me. I 've a trap for his fine loyal principles ! 
All I want of you is a well-rigged sloop and twenty sailors to go 
down the coast with me where my bulky prize rides at anchor, 
and help fetch away the treasure. You '11 be well paid for 't, 



man 



" Captain Kidd," said the older man, rising from his chair and 
straightening his tall, spare figure, " I accept your offer and will sign 
the contract. My remuneration should be heavy, for you well 
know the risk I run under the new laws against harboring pirates, 
should you be convicted of so grave an offence. I make this 
agreement with ' His Majesty's privateersman,' " and he made an 
obeisance before the bold adventurer. 

" Done ! " cried the sailor, starting up, and setting down his 
glass so emphatically that it shivered to atoms on the table. " Have 
your craft off I5roecklyn, near the Wallabogt, at the first ebb-tide 
on Monday next " 

" But the girl," broke in Colonel Fletcher, " I — I can't engage 
to keep her on account of — of my lady. ' 

The captain's brow darkened. " Why not, man ? She's as 
honest a woman as treads the earth, and I tell ye she 's no man's 
wife ! I mean to marry her myself, but how can I prove the lie 
on that infernal villian ot a Balldridge in time to get off on my 



8 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

cruise next month ? He says she 's a slave, and that he boiig-ht her, 
and I say he Hes ! She 's a Spaniard, and as white as you are, 
and he stole her from a ship they took in the South Seas. I want 
to keep her safe from him till I come back from this one more 
venture." 

Colonel Fletcher shrugged his shoulders and replied only : " It 
is a simple thing to find asylum here. As for me, my wife likes 
not a comely maid about the house." 

" Lest she be beguiled of your fine person ? " sneered Kidd ; 
" well, let be, I 11 not trouble you, unwilling to guard that treas- 
ure, lest I find it but ill-kept against my return." 

So saying, he stalked out, with footfalls resounding on the 
oaken floor, and his form was soon lost in the darkness of the 
street. What business he next applied himself to appears in the 
fragment of an old document, being a letter from the Earl of Bello- 
mont to the Board of Trade in the mother country. 

" I forgot in my last letter to their Lordships to acquaint them 
with an arch piece of villainy done by that rogue of a chaplain 
whom I have since dismissed. He goes to the Lieutenant-Gov- 
ernor and desires him to sign a blank marriage license, pretending 
the parties thereto wish to keep their names concealed. The 
Lieutenant-Governor, suspecting mischief, refuses to do this, and 
my chaplain goes away. Afterward my good man brings another 
license, containing the names of Captain William Kidd and Isabella 
del Puerto, who has come, it seems, in his ship from the South 
Seas. Since then it transpires that he took her forcibly from 
Balldridge, the pirate, who says he bought her as a slave, and took 
her for a wife. Kidd, however, with his usual villainy, abducted 
her, and she is hidden past finding, for Kidd swore he would give 
up his life sooner than disclose her whereabouts." The letter is 
dated some time after Kidd's apprehension and confinement, on 
his return from his projected expedition just alluded to. 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. g 

At noon on the following Monday a smart little craft was 
standing on and off shore near the Wallabogt, where soon ap- 
peared a sloop bearing down toward her. Some signals were 
exchanged, and the two vessels bore away to Sandy Hook 
and disappeared from sight of shore. Not many days after they 
returned heavily laden, and to the excitement and intense curiosity 
of the New Amsterdamers waiting on the Battery for their landin^T, 
passed on up the river, hugging the west shore, as if to baffle 
curious eyes. Farther up the river they cast anchor. 

Just at nightfall a boat put off from one of them, and in a litde 
while Captain Kidd was striding unobserved through the town, 
until he reached a place where streets converged and o-ot them- 
selves into a hopeless snarl. Here, turning a sharp corner, he 
ran bump against a man, who cried : "What, ho! my bold cap- 
tain, well met ! " and Colonel Fletcher pushed him about and 
gazed inquiringly into his face. 

" Greeting to you — greeting ! " cried the captain impatiently. 
" Let me pass! " and brushing off the detaining hand, he hurried 
on with a curse at this untoward meeting. 

" A — ah ! " sofdy said the wily Fletcher, " so that is the game! 
He takes his bird up river with the gold ! " 

Kidd stopped at last before a low door-way, and gave a gentle 
rat-tat with the big brass knocker. The house was a small one, 
standing like most of the houses of that time with its gable-end to 
the street, and the entrance was through a peaked-roofed stoop, 
on each side of which were benches, where the good burghers 
were wont to sit of a summer evening and smoke the pipe of 
peaceful domesticity. 

As our hero waited and listened for an answer to his summons, 
the step of a passer caused him to draw back in the shadow. 
While he waited, the man came opposite to him and he recognized 



lO THE LAND OF RIP ]'AX WINKLE. 

the gait and fig-ure of the hated Balldridge. At the same instant 
a h'ghter step in the hallway caused his heart to leap up, for Ball- 
dridge had paused there looking up at the house. What if the 
door should open and a light, held high above a lovely head, 
should reveal the features of her whom he was hiding from this 
fiend, standing here not six feet away in the darkness ? His 
hand reached out and grasped the door-handle, but the pirate 
passed on, apparently satisfied in his search. 

Not long after this episode, two figures came out of the house, 
one muffled and veiled, the other full of anxious cares for his com- 
panion, lifting her over the puddles and rough places, pulling her 
shawl closer about her slender shoulders, and often supporting 
affectionately the lagging steps. Once in the little boat and off 
for the vessel, the Spanish maiden — for it was she — seemed to re- 
vive in courage and in spirits, and all the voyage up the beautiful 
river she spent in gayety and happiness, with her husband, the 
pirate captain, or " king's privateersman," as Bellomont had now 
made him. 

Soon he was to go on the king's bidding, by means of Bello- 
mont, to fight the pirates in " the Red Sea or elsewhere," but 
on his return he would settle down in the New World with this 
beautiful wife, and live a new and happy life. So they dreamed 
and loved each other, on this strange bridal journey, being happy 
and gay, for was not danger and that dreadful Balldridge behind 
them ? and though parting was so near, it would not be very 
long to wait — two years at most, — and then peace and prosperity 
for the rest of their lives. Meanwhile she was to find protection 
with an old negress whom Kidd knew, and who lived in a little 
house at the foot of Kaaterskill, or Palenville Clove, by the 
wonderful Catskills. She could wait for him in that charming little 
mountain nook, and surely none could find her there. His had 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. ii 

been a life of wild adventure and many daring and successful ex- 
ploits, and the warm autumn days passed quickly as they sailed 
along, beguiling the way with tales of the past. She, too, had 
suffered privation and dangers, as stolen from her father's ship now 
a year since, she had been passed over to the cruel Balldridge as 
his slave, and had been rescued a few months after by Captain 
Kidd, in a fight with his pirate crew in the South Sea. She had 
soon learned to love her deliverer, who treated her with a gentle- 
ness and deference as extreme as his harshness and severity to 
others. No knight of old was ever more noble in his lady's eyes, 
than this pirate of world's renown in the sight of the romantic 
Spanish girl. Doubtless she made no fine-spun analysis of his 
moral deviations, and to her, his seizure of other men's ships on 
the high seas was no theft, but an adventure in which daring 
and danger played equal parts, while crowned monarchs watched the 
deeds of her hero. Now that he had promised to amend his life 
and was about setting forth on an expedition as a loyal subject of 
the English king, any wrong, if wrong there was in him, was 
wiped away. 

It is a pretty picture, of which tradition gives us but a glimpse 
or hint, this brief idyl in the wild life of Kidd ; the slow sail up the 
broad river in the October haze of the faded days of fall in this en- 
chanted region. In and out of the Highlands, where Anthony's 
Nose was only a high purple mountain of tremulous sunshine, and 
the gorgeous foliage of many tints came down to the water's very 
edge, and leaned over to see itself in the placid river ; past Esopus, 
hidden up its winding creek, and so to Catskill, where, after many 
calms and delays, they at last arrived, and the beautiful water- 
journey was ended. 

Here they lay at anchor for two days, while Captain Kidd went 
among the friendly natives and settlers, trading and giving out 



12 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

that he and his friends came here for the fishing and for furs wliich 
they wanted in trade from the Indians. On the third night there 
came on board an Indian who drew the captain aside to give him 
some information, and in an hour's time twenty men went down 
over the side of the larger sloop into boats which were there in 
waiting, and last came the Spanish girl, cloaked and veiled as be- 
fore. Each man carried on his shoulders a leather sack which 
seemed very heavy. 

Arrived on shore they took a path leading around the village 
through the woods, avoiding all observation and proceeding in 
complete silence. So they passed on over the hills toward the 
mountains, coming in the early dawn to the opening of the Kaater- 
skill Clove. Here the men were marched with care into a thicker 
part of the forest, and their captain and the lady struck off by a 
side path toward the outskirts of the litde setdement. Just where 
the road coming out of the clove now divides, stood then a little 
hut, where lived alone an old Madagascar negress, shunned 
by the whites and the Indians. Over the few black slaves held 
then by the early setders she exercised great power, for they 
feared her and yet paid her a half-worshipful deference. At the 
time of our story, the latter part of the seventeenth century, the 
old quarrels between the Patroon Van Rensselaer and the gov- 
ernment of the colony having been long since settled, a good title 
could be given to purchasers of farms in the valley, and the 
holders rendered safe from the autocratic seizures of tithes and im- 
posts by the old Patroon, who had tenaciously claimed the region, 
and hence these rich lands were being rapidly setded and cul- 
tivated. In the prosecution of such labors, the farmers from time 
to time sent to New York, or as the Dutch still insisted on calling 
it, New Amsterdam, for slaves, and in one of these consignments 
had come old Dora, the negress just mentioned. She had pre- 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 13 

sented free papers, or rather a document certifying that her free- 
dom had been bought, and she had given the price of her passage 
to Catskill, wishing, she said, to live near the mountains. She 
seemed to be supplied with money sufficient for her needs, and 
wore about her unusual signs of prosperity, such as great shining 
silver hoops in her ears, and a heavy string of beaten silver beads 
of rude manufacture about her neck. All these peculiar circum- 
stances, and her wish to live alone in a strange, far country up the 
river, caused even her white neighbors to regard her with sus- 
picion. Long years after, the story gained currency that it was 
Kidd who sent her, with just the contingency in mind, that there 
would come a day when she would prove useful in helping him to 
conceal his treasures in these haunted hills. 

To this woman Kidd took his bride, and left her with many 
kisses of farewell in the tender care of the negress. The old 
woman went out with him for a moment to a place behind the hut, 
and there received from him certain orders and advice, and, doubt- 
less, also good gold, and for many days after she absented herself 
for several hours, saying it was at his commands. Perhaps she 
was carrying the bags one by one to places of concealment on the 
mountain, where some day their contents will astonish and delight 
a hardy explorer, climbing up to the hidden caves and deep crevices 
that seam their rocky sides. However that may be, the men must 
have left their burdens to her care, for they were back on their 
boats by night again without taking time to climb up through the 
clove. 

This treasure was the contents of one only of the sloops, and 
what was done with the rest is matter of comment to this day, and 
the men have been not a few who have sought them up and down 
on both banks of the river. The remaining treasure was probably 
buried somewhere between New York and Catskill, for the sloops 



14 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

returned empty, and the rest of the goods of the Moorish mer- 
chantman were disposed of in other directions, the vessels making 
no further voyages up the Hudson. 

Soon after this we have records of the new compact Kidd 
made with the Earl of Bellomont, governor of the provinces, and 
Robert Livingston, whom Kidd had probably taken occasion to 
visit on his return down the river, the Livingston Manor beine 
about twelve miles below Catskill, on the east bank. 

Articles of agreement were drawn up between Kidd, Robert 
Livingston, and Bellomont, by which the earl was to pay four 
fifths of the cost of a ship to sail to " the Red Sea or elsewhere," 
and also to procure a captain's commision for Wm. Kidd, in the 
royal navy, Livingston to pay the remaining fifth of the ship's cost, 
while Kidd bound himself to the king's service, and if he secured 
no treasure was to give up the ship on his return. The agree- 
ment begins as follows : " Whereas the said Captain Kidd is de- 
sirous to obtain a commission as captain of a private man-of-war 
in order to take prizes from the king's ennemies, and otherwise to 
annoy them, and whereas, also, certain persons did some time 
since depart from New England, Rhode . Island, New York, 
and other parts in America and elsewhere, w'h an intention to 
pyrates and to comit spoyles and depredations against the laws of 
Nations, in the Red Sea or elsewhere, and to return with such 
goods and riches as they could get, to certain places by them 
agreed upon, of which said persons and places the said Captain 
Kidd hath notice, and is desirous to fight w'h & subdue the said 
pyrates with whom the said Captain Kidd shall meet at sea, in 
case he is empowered so to do, and whereas it is agreed between 
the said parties that for the purposes aforesaid, a good and sufifi- 
cient ship, to the likeing of the said Captain Kidd shall be forth- 
with bought, whereof the said Captain Kidd is to have the comand." 



i6 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

All of which was duly and promptly done, and in the year 1695 
our gallant hero sailed away a full-fledged captain in the king's 
service, " with white sails flowing the seas beyond," but never 
more to sail the peaceful waters of the river, where awaited him 
his dream of love and peace and happiness. Even the dream 
soon proved false, and faded, for rude hands disturbed his little 
mountain nest, and once more sorrow hunted forth the bird it had 
sheltered. 

In the spring following Kidd's departure, a new settler came to 
the valley lands under the mountains. Five hundred acres were 
bought near Leeds, and a large stone house, with suitable out- 
buildings for the cattle and slaves, erected. The owner was a 
stumpy, cruel-faced man, with a sun-burned, sailor look, and a 
manner full of vulgarity, while his speech was plentifully interlarded 
with oaths. He maltreated his slaves, frequently administering 
unmerciful punishments, such as hanging by the thumbs and tying 
the tongue with a tightly-drawn cord, until his neighbors shunned 
and loathed him. He seemed not to lack money, for he pushed 
the building and cultivating of his farm in a way that involved 
great outlay, and caused the frugal Dutch to marvel greatly, and 
to wonder from what land of plenty this prodigal stranger hailed. 
He had no family and no companion, and as autumn came on, and 
the work of settling was nearly finished, a loneliness and restless- 
ness seemed to take possession of him, and then he would wander 
away on his horse, spending whole days in the mountains, as if 
seeking some one. 

Meanwhile how fares our Spanish beauty in her hiding-place ? 
All through the long winter she had pined and drooped, sitting 
sadly in the little cabin while the old negress went out on her daily 
ramble among the hills. Nothing could curb these restless roam- 
ings, not even the deep snow, for the creature had improvised a 




17 



VIEW FROM PROSPECT ROCK. — KAATERSKILL FALLS. 



1 8 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

kind of snow-shoe, and on these she kept up her daily habit of 
wandering. Among many other crafts she had learned shooting 
with the bow and arrow, and seldom returned without some small 
beast or bird to tempt the appetite of her guest. Daily she tried 
to draw the maiden with her, but in vain ; the poor girl only 
shook her head sadly, and shuddered as she glanced at the snow 
outside. 

One day the negress said to her in the fragmentary Spanish she 
had learned somewhere in her wanderings : " Come now, I have a 
great wonder to show you — only this once ; I will not ask you 
again." 

As if to buy peace at any price, the young girl rose and suf- 
fered herself to be equipped for a mountain climb. On snow 
shoes, she followed her guide up a winding trail and then over a 
level stretch, coming toward the amphitheatre where the fall of the 
Kaaterskill drops over seemingly, from one point, into bottomless 
space. Clambering down the deep ravine, her mind lost in far off 
thoughts, the Spanish lady reached the bottom of the first ravine, 
when her guide seized her arm and pointed upward. To the half- 
blinded eyes of this daughter of the South, who had never beheld 
snow and ice before this dreary winter, a miracle appeared, and, 
subdued by its power, she devoutly crossed herself. From within 
a few feet of them rose a shining white tower of glittering ice, 
touching with its apex the cliff above. Dazzled at first by the ex- 
cessive brilliancy of reflection, the eyes could perceive nothing but 
the white blinding licjht of it all, but at last, accustomed to the 
glare, Isabel perceived through the ice walls the stream, leaping 
forth and breaking into spray, but perfectly noiseless. It was a 
phantom waterfall, enchanted and bound in this prison of ice. All 
round the circular edge of the cliff above, great icicles fell in a 
crystal fringe, reflecting the sunlight in all the prismatic tints, a 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



19 



blazing border of green and orange and rose-red jewels. Beneath 
the frozen lake on which the great tower stood, the stream slid 
silently away to the lower fall where it broke into a thousand 
waves, making the second cataract a great frozen wall of plunging 
waters. 




=^^** _* 







LOOKING UP. LOOKING DOWN. 

fawn's leap. 



The maiden was much moved by all this, and from that day 
forth, no longer declined to accompany the black woman on her 
rambles. As spring crept up the mountains, they fished in the 
swollen watercourses or hunted for sweet cresses or the flowering 



20 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

arbutus. Each changing month developed some new treasure of 
nature which the old woman's wood-lore readily found and ap- 
propriated. So passed away the summer, and autumn found the 
captain's bride more cheerful and even merry at times. 

One October day the two companions were seated with their 
basket beside them, on the cliff above Fawn's Leap. All the vivid 
tints were on the foliage once more, and the same purple haze 
through which she had sailed hither last year, was filling the heart 
of Isabel with sad thoughts as she leaned back with hands clasped 
behind her head. Startled suddenly by the crackling of branches 
and the sound of a human voice beneath them, she sat up and 
leaned forward to observe the intruder. The voice went on talk- 
ing as if the man spoke only to himself: " She must be about this 
clove somewhere ; Fletcher said it all went here, from that sloop, 
and the girl went with the gold. A curse on the coin ! I want 
the snxW Let Fletcher find the sjold for himself! " 

Isabel listened with a beating heart. The old negress had 
fallen into a doze, and, seated a little way off, kept her head rest- 
ing on her knees. The girl looked at her and made a rapid cal- 
culation of the time necessary to waken her and escape through 
the bushes ; then, looking more closely at the man below, she rec- 
ognized the hated Balldrid^e, and all discretion fled from her, even 
the power of thought, as the wild instinct of flight alone possessed 
her limbs. In a moment she had sprung from rock to rock across 
the stream, and was dashing through brush and brier in a blind ef- 
fort to escape ; but in that moment the pirate had seen her, and, 
springing up the mountain side, made short work of so unequal a 
chase. He caught her near the open trail that led up through the 
clove, and quickly securing her struggling form, regardless of cries 
and remonstrances, to his horse which he had tied there, bore her 
down to his home near Leeds, for he was the stranger who had 




VIEW FROM THE TOIL-HOUSE AT TALENVILLE. 



22 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

built the fine new house there. Not a word did he excliansfe with 
her till safe and fast in his stone prison he had her at his mercy, 
and then the blacks told fearful tales of the sounds that issued from 
the room where she was locked in. 

Each day the " mas'r " would go to her, and the tones of his 
voice through the closed door would sound almost gentle, as he 
seemed to plead with her, but the replies were too low to be 
heard. At length his words would grow louder, and curses came 
thicker and faster, while the answers were still the same ; at last, 
blows and shrieks would come forth, frightening all the servants 
from the house. Presently the door would slam, and the master 
would stalk forth to visit his still unsatisfied rage on whatever 
crossed his path. He said he had a runaway slave in that room, 
and warned the rest not to merit a like fate. 

Throucjh all the lono- winter no one ever saw the face of this 
runaway, but through many a night the blacks heard her footsteps 
as she paced back and forth — and sometimes her sobs. At last, 
when spring had returned, one morning she was gone. Balldridge 
raged and cursed, but in vain ; no one knew aught of her method 
of escape, though the blacks believed that some supernatural 
power had spirited her away from her tormentor. The tormentor, 
however, had quite a different suspicion, tor under the window 
were two pairs of footprints, and all went in the direction of the 
mountains. 

The ensuing month he spent searching for the hut of the old 
negress. Somewhere in the Kaaterskill Clove he knew it must be, 
though he had no certain information even of that. 

Again poor Isabel was back with her old protectress, but 
only a shadow of the Isabel who had been carried away the 
previous autumn. Haggard and thin, she sat all day gazing 
with her great wild eyes into the fire. Every e.xpression, save 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 23 

terror, seemed to have left her face, and that emotion was written 
in every Hne of her shrinking' form. The old woman has hardly 
been able to leave her side since the escape, so distraught has the 
poor girl been at the mere idea of being alone. This morning, 
however, wood must be brought for the fire, and meal from a 
neighboring farm, so with many soothing words and charges to 
keep closely within doors, the negress leaves her for a few hours. 
Crouched clown in the chimney-corner, the orii-1 awaits hour after 
hour the returning footsteps. At last, soothed by the continued 
silence and the loneliness of the surrounding forest, she leans her 
poor distracted head against the bricks and dry mud that form 
the chimney, and falls into a deep sleep. Perhaps it is a dream of 
the river journey that comes to her — that voyage that seems now 
so far off in the past, — or perhaps it is a vision of the new life she 
is to enter with her gallant lover when he returns from his pursuit 
of the king's business. Whatever the picture may be that merci- 
ful sleep has painted, its glory has lighted up her tace and fixed a 
smile on her lips. Some one conies creeping in at the half open 
door, some one steps softly over the clay floor and stands over 
her, and the some one holds in one hand a cow-hide whip, and in 
the other a coil of stout hempen cord. On the stooping face 
is a baleful look, more powerful, seemingly, than whip or rope, 
for the sleeper stirs uneasily, the light leaves her face, and she 
slowly opens her eyes. There is not a sound between them, and 
the girl presses her eyes shut with her hands as if thereby to dis- 
pel a hideous nightmare that has somehow turned up among her 
dream-pictures, then opens them again to behold the dreadful 
picture still there. Still not a sound does she make, till Balldridge 
raises himself and says between his set teeth : 

" Get up, and come with me ! " 

Then she springs away from him, throwing her arms wildly 
above her head. 



24 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



" I will not — I will not ! I will die before I cfo back to that 
dreadful house and — and you ! " 

Here a shudder of inexpressible loathing seizes her and she 
rushes toward the door as if a remembrance of some cliff near by 
had suggested to her an easy method of ending the misery to 
come. But Balldridge is too quick for her, and soon has her 
bound, and is hurrying to his horse in the path below the hill. 
Here a brilliant device occurs to his fiendish invention, and he 
ties one end of the cord round her neck, attaching the other end 
to his saddle. 

" Now, my lass," he cries, as he springs on the horse, " this 
time you may walk, and we '11 see if you 're in a hurry again to run 
away to that she-devil among the hills ! " 

Whether the girl cried out, or made some backward move- 
ment, or whether indeed the spur pricked too sharply, is not 
known, but the spirited horse plunged suddenly, pitching his rider 
headlong before him, and dashed off homeward. Poor Isabel's 
miseries were soon at an end, for death must have quickly ensued. 
Certain it is that her body was dashed literally to pieces against 
the rocks on that awful journey, and the horse arrived at his stable 
with only the worn and broken cord dragging behind him. 

So brutal a murder, even of a slave, found some punishment in 
the imperfect administration of justice in those early days. Ball- 
dridge was found guilty, but some interest, presumably his gold, 
softened the sentence. He was to be hung — when he arrived at 
the age of ninety-nine! He was also to present himself to the 
judges of the court, once each year when court was in session, 
wearing always a cord around his neck as a memento of his crime. 

So he wore out his wretched days, hated and feared by all who 
knew him, and in his old age they say he wore always a silken 
cord about his neck. 



THE LAND OF KIP VAN WINKLE. 25 

The scattered remains of the girl were collected and buried 
by order of the court, opposite his house-door, where a stone, 
telling the story of her death, should face him as he passed out. 
But he nailed up the door and no one ever after used it. The 
strangest part of his story is that he actually lived to be ninety- 
nine years old, though no one then could be found who would have 
molested the old man, already punished by along life of loneliness 
and fear. 

The house where he lived has been haunted ever since, and 
though now in ruins, it is said that in one corner where stood the 
room in which the hapless Isabel was imprisoned, all night long 
footsteps go pacing back and forth, and sobs and wails and bitter 
sighs afflict the night air. A great white horse with fiery eyes 
comes tearing down the road toward Leeds, dragging a ghastly 
shrieking ghost, but sometimes both horse and ghostly woman 
take on the form of skeletons. 

As for Captain Kidd, he never returned to claim his bride. 
He sailed to the Red Sea as per contract, but he seems to have 
been unable to resist the spell of his old outlaw life, for instead of 
capturing the pirates, he joined with them once more. He was at 
last captured and taken to London, says the old chronicle, and was 
hanged. The last glimpse we have of him in our old New York 
documents is where the Earl of Bellomont falls under some slight 
suspicion with the Lords of Trade, of having connived somewhat 
at Kidd's piracies in the hope of gain for himself. Their Lord- 
ships viewed with disapproval that fine scheme of Livingstone and 
Bellomont to " set a thief to catch a thief," and so they set inquiries 
on foot, thereby worrying the Earl into shifting most of the blame 
on Mr. Livingstone. 

In a letter to Vernon, the secretary, the Earl says : " There 's 
no intricacy in all that matter," and further on he continues, 



26 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

" and ye success, I believe, had been very fortunate and 



serviceable, had we not been persuaded by Mr. Livingstone to put 
the ship under the comand of a most aband'd villian, for we 
were all of us strangers to Kidd, but employed him on Mr. Liv- 
ingstone's recommendation of his bravery and honesty, but he 
broke articles with us, for, instead of sailing direct to those seas 
which pyrate ships do frequent, he came hither directly to New 
York and loytered away several months ; and Mr. Livingstone 
hath told me that there was a private contract between Colonel 
Fletcher and Kidd, whereby Kidd obliged himself to give Fletcher 
10,000 li. if he made a voyage ; Mr. Livingstone told me this was 
whispered about but he could not get any such light on it as to be 

able to prove there was such a bargain between them," " for 

mine own part I never saw him (Kidd) above thrice, and Mr. 
Livingstone came with him every time to my house in Dover 
Street." 

No doubt this bargain dimly hinted at between Fletcher and 
Kidd was payment for the loan of Fletcher's sloop. Whatever 
their bargains, their sins and their frustrated dreams, they have 
probaby long since cleared them all up, for governor and pirate, 
Livingstone and Fletcher, Kidd and his Spanish maiden, had 
joined the great procession of" dim sheeted ghosts " many a year 
before we threw over our colonial governors alonsf with that fate- 
ful tea in Boston harbor, and all other British abominations. 

" Oh, thank you ! " cries Miss Polly, as the story is ended ; " I 
am sure I shall think of that poor girl at every spot you have men- 
tioned in your story ! I shall not be able to climb through that 
ravine of the Kaaterskill Clove without a wild desire to run from 
Balldridge, and I shall just shi-iver when I see that old hut if it is 
still there I " 

Here a diversion was made by Captain Oldbore, who had come 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 27 

up during the latter part of the recital, and who had restrained 
himself thus far with difficulty. 

" Why, man, that 's the most absurdly inaccurate thing I ever 
heard ! all that about the dragging at the horse's tail is another 
story, and of itself was pure fabrication, you must know ! Of 
course as to the coming of Kidd up here, that 's likely enough, 
though how far up he came is not settled, but the rest, oh, pish ! " 

" I have told my story, " says the Literary Fellow, with a quiet 
smile ; " the burden of disproof lies with you." 




ON THF. ESOPUS NEAR PHOENICIA. 



" Yes," says Miss Polly, " sit right down and begin ; no doubt 
we shall listen entranced ! " with which remark she walks scorn- 
fully away. 

" By the way. Captain Oldbore, we must be coming to some 
very interesting revolutionary ground now ; no doubt this part of 
the river is teeming with historical associations." 

The old gentleman forgets his late rebuke under Miss Ruther- 
ford's gentle influence, and forthwith launches out into such a 
stream of anecdote and reminiscence and statistics as rivets that lady 
to his side willy-nilly. On past Kingston and Rondout they sail, 



28 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

where the massacre of Esopus and its burning- by the British are 
treated at length, till Catskill village approaches. The entrance 
to the enchanted land is not far away now, and behold, its guardian 
lying asleep on the mountain tops ! 

Nearing Catskill as you come up the river, the gigantic outlines 
of a recumbent Indian are traceable in the contour of the moun- 
tains against the sky. He lies on his back, with his knees slightly 
drawn up, and arms folded across his breast. The elongation on 
top of his head has the appearance of a war-plume of feathers. 
The attitude is imposing in its grand serenit\-, and on those ideal 
mountain days, when great fluffy clouds go chasing across their 
wooded sides, playing hide-and-seek with the sunshine, we can 
easily appreciate how distinct the personality of this giant warrior 
became to the superstitious mind of the savage, as the shifting 
lights give him the appearance of slight movement, and even 
cause his breast to heave convulsively betimes. Of course he had 
his story ; what hill, or valley, or appearance in nature, had not its 
reason for being in the misty shadow-land of the Indian's past ? 

" Once on a time," Great Manitou's favorite children, the Iro- 
quois tribes, were worrried and devoured by a giant until they 
could endure it no longer, neither vanquish him unaided, so they 
cast themselves on the mercy of the Great Spirit. They went up 
to his high places, and besought him, saying: "Great Father of 
us all, thou knowest we have done brave things ! We have de- 
fended our lodges ; we have given our lives ; we have not been 
afraid ; we have done according to thy command, and we are not 
strong enough. Oh ! Chief of Warriors, slay this giant for us ! " 

So Manitou heard their prayer, and came among them in the 
form of a huge eagle, to deliver them. He found that the giant 
had devoured their corn so that their wives and children starved, 
and the breath of the dread creature was so foul that many died 



THE LAXD OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 29 

of wasting disease. Then IManitou engaged in a fierce conflict 
with the evil spirit, who had the appearance of an Indian, and at 
last vanquished him, but did not kill him. He, however, put him 
into a deep sleep, and chained him in the outline of his sacred 
hills, saying to his children, the tribes about their feet: "There 
shall he lie in slumber while ye are brave and fierce and strong, 
and therefore pleasing to me ; but when I am angered against my 
children, I will wake him again, and he shall arise and destroy all 
thinofs ! " 




ON CATbKlLL CKLEK. 



Thus pestilence and famine were taken from this favored peo- 
ple, and chained in Manitou's hunting-ground, and heaven's sun- 
shine, rain, and breezes brought back plenty and health to this 
happy region. Surely, on these wind-blown hill-tops, where, from 
snow till snow again, some spicy breath ever scents the air, 
whether of sweet-fern or flowers, or the hundred odors of the deep 
wood, the " Big Indian " can never wake and arise again. 

Arrived at Catskill, the party was suddenly dropped into a 



30 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

howling babel, whereby any sane and clear-headed person might 
easily have been driven to sudden insanity ; but these travellers 
were old stagers, used to journeyings by land and sea, and conse- 
quently not readily confused. They wended their way, uninter- 
rupted by any alluring cries of " This way, Sir ! Cab, Sir? " "Car- 
riage, Sir ? — this way for Mountain View House ! " " Only stage 
direct to the mountains ! " With stern determination, they shook 
off these hackmen, who always know better than you do where 
you want to go, and got into the narrow-gauge train, in waiting 
for passengers bound for the mountains. 

" There, now ! " exclaimed Miss Perkins, as they passed on, 
" that poor old lady who said she wanted to go to Catskill Village, 
has resigned herself to those demons and they will tear her limb 
from limb ! " 

Unfortunately she had given herself to one cabby and her 
baggage to another, and thus chaos had ensued. 

The office which the shrieking little engine resigned at Palen- 
ville, a huge mountain coach there assumed, and the party was 
transferred to it for the climb up the mountain side. 

Oh, the loveliness of that ascent ! Out of the dust and heat, by 
slow toiling, surely, and yet with evident progress, into a new 
world of verdure and cool breezes and great silence. There was 
only a hint now and then of vast reaches into space, for daylight 
was fast fleeing, to be replaced by the glimmer of a young moon, 
and, as the great ark of a stage lurched around a corner where the 
forest was cut away, the faint touch of silver on a sea of tree-tops 
below made their hearts beat with a sense of the depths just be- 
yond. 

Our tired travellers slept the sleep of the weary that night, and 
if strange visions of Rip Van Winkle's midnight revellers visited 
more than one pillow, what wonder? Had they not seen the inn 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



31 



to which he returned from his long sleep in this very clove, and the 
old sign swinging, on their way up, and all by the witching light 
of the young moon ? 

In spite of all that they were \\\) betimes in the morning, and 
assembled in the parlor by appointment to go out to an eight 
o'clock breakfast. But where was pretty Polly ? Surely, she of 
all people could not be wasting this precious holiday in sleep ! 
Indeed not, for here she comes, a great bunch of hare-bells in her 
hands. 




RIP VAN WINKLE HOUSE. 



" Aha ! " she cries, " I have outdone you all, for I was up in 
time to see the sun rise, and see, I have a nosegay with mountain- 
dew on it. 

Breakfast over, the next thing to do is North Mountain with its 
views. The day was one peculiarly characteristic oi the moun- 
tains, hot, but with an occasional cool breeze to pat the cheek 
with a slightly frosty touch, and little white clouds sailing over the 
bluest of skies. 



32 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



Toiling up the steep slope near Captain Oldbore was a stout 
old German gentleman with a pleasant, beaming face, out of which 
a pair of mild blue eyes looked through very short-sighted glasses. 
At some exclamation of surprise, he took occasion to say, " Then 
it ees that you are strange to these mountains ? " 

Being assured that such was the case, he continued : 
" Oh, it ees not so with me ! I am gomino- here now these 
dwenty years, and it is dangerous eff you will pe glimbing. It is 
many soomers I hev carried pendages und leeniment in my 




THE OLU GERMAN. 

-here he displayed a neat roll of linen 



apprehension ! 



huddered one of the 



pockets for an eccident 
and the bottle. 

'• What a dreadfu 
ladies. 

Back toward the west, the view from the North Mountain is 
very fine, and no feature in it is more lovely than the tiny lakes 
nestling down in the shadows. On the dullest days they catch 
some remnant of light and flash it back to the hill-tops. Mrs, 
Schuyler felt that she could not go home without a nearer ex- 
ploration of those lakes. 

" Better not ; you won't find them so pretty nearer by, prob- 
ably nothing but boggy little mud-holes." 



34 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



It was the Artist who spoke, and his temerity was promptly 
punished by the general expression of a determination to investi- 
gate those bodies of water while at the Kaaterskill Hotel. 

In the afternoon they transferred themselves to that house. 
There the ladies seated themselves on the broad veranda, while 
the male members of the party were absent in conclave with that 
august person, the hotel clerk. 

The rueful groups soon returned, headed by Mr. Schuyler. 




THE DUDE. 



" Well, my dear," said that over-heated and rubicund indi- 
vidual, " I guess we re in for it. They re all here — the Carrolls, 
the Beekmans, and fifty more — besides, there 's a hop to-night." 

This last was added tentatively, in some fear of that imperious 
little lady who ruled his skies, for well he knew her aversion to 
summer parties and other full-dress frivolities in the " heated 
term." Each summer she carried off her submissive spouse to a 
pleasuring like this, with a few chosen spirits, for a rest, after the long 
winter when she served her turn at Society's wheel with the other 



36 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

social slaves. Now she leaned back in her chair and fanned 
herself gloomily. 

Alas! the futility of those pretty dresses in the trunks ! Each 
lady had brought a gown suitable to meet just such a possible con- 
tingency as this, but it was carried much as one takes an um- 
brella on a cloudy day, with a defiantly-held superstition that it 
may scare off the rain. Miss Rutherford, too, looked bored, but 
Miss Polly cried gayly, " Why, that 's delightful ! " 

So the hop came off, bringing pleasure to one of the ladies at 
least, and our pilgrims made their entree once more into New 
York and Philadelphia and Boston at once, in the ereat drawing- 
room which seemed large enough to hold the entire population of 
the last-named city. All the many friends came flocking about, 
and the mutual surprises and greetings and exclamations were very 
numerous. 

There was a band, of course, and waltzing, and some flirtation, 
no doubt, while just outside the long windows the moonlight had 
flooded the great world beneath their feet. Surely in that en- 
chanted land down there, all wrapped in a silver mist where a 
shinino- ribbon wound alono- throucrh the dim li^ht showing the 
course of the river, surely there was no care, nor sorrow, nor heart- 
ache. What a wonderfully beautiful world it is after all, and how 
the cynics have abused it ! A faint odor steals up through the still 
air, the moonlight has a kind of throb in it ; verily those hills, rising 
far away there in the east, must be the Delectable Mountains. Here 
an " ill-boding crow," awakened from his midnight slumbers, comes 
flapping and croaking up the gorge, a window opens on the quiet 
corner and two people step out, bringing a flare of gaslight, the 
sound of brass instruments, and a scrap of society comment. 

" You think her so c|uiet and pretty ? I assure you her con- 
duct has been the gossip of the house this month past ! " 



38 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



Wake up, old world ! You are an arrant humbuLj, no Arcadia 
after all, but just the same old evil-thinkinLT and evil-speaking 
world you were before. 

In the morninef there was an enertretic scramble over rocks and 
hills and through rocky ravines. Who can tell what those seven 
people saw from Sunset Rock ? Each through his own mood saw 
his own picture, and long he never so deeply, not one peep could 




ALIGATOK KciCK. 



he get of what his neighbor might be finding there at the same 
moment. In the shifting lights and shades, the deep greens and 
suggestions of coming autumn, the Artist found much for his work, 
and carried home with him more than his portfolio held, while I 
doubt if Miss Rutherford's herbarium contains half the blossoms she 
picked by the way ; as for the Literary Fellow, much was brewing 
in his head, of which he afterward gave to others but a portion, and 



40 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



that perhaps not of his best, for what is best in artistic impressions 
seldom eets translated after all, so that a man's work is always just 
behind his effort. 

As for the tiny lakes they proved to be as lovely as they had 
promised. Nestling down between the surrounding peaks, they 
seemed fit abodes of peace. Around their shores tall reeds, cat- 
tails, calumus, and many others are ever nodding and bowing before 




SIIKI.rKKIXr, KOI K. 

the little breezes that shiver over the bosom of the water, while 
tall trees lean over as far as they dare in the marshy foothold, and 
throw deep shadows where trout can hide safely and water-fowl 
float secure in the early spring. 

Here these people rested in the shade, while the energetic 
Miss Polly and John Grant went cleaving the water in a sharp- 
nosed little boat after water-lilies that floated far out in mid- 
channel. 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



41 



Already there were forewarnings of a shower, at which they 
all rejoiced greatly, for a storm on these mountains gave promise 
of great beauty and grandeur entirely new to them. The neces- 
sary thing to do, therefore, was to make all haste to begin the pros- 
pective drive down to Palen- 
ville, for they were going there 
to engage rooms for the follow- 
ing day, and they wanted to ob- 
serve the progress of the stonn 
from the new road that lead- 
down the mountains from tin 
Kaaterskill House. 

Midway on the descent the | 
storm burst upon them, so tin 
covered wagon drew up at ont 
side of the road beneath soim 
overhanijinof trees, and the in 
mates arranged themselves to 
enjoy the shower and yet pre- 
serve dry clothes. With a tre- 
mendous crashing and booming 
it came tearing down the narrow 
gorge. The rain seemed to ad- 
vance in a gray column reach- 
ing from the earth up into ix cauterskili. clove after rain. 

the darkened heavens, and the wind rushed along as if through 
a funnel, with a fury redoubled from being confined b_\' the moun- 
tain sides. The trees bent low their bared heads, their branches 
and leaves flying before the blast. The noise of the thunder was 
deafening as it reechoed from side to side of the deep ravine. As 
the storm was fierce, so it was of short duration, and soon the rain- 




42 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



cloud seemed to have passed over, while the sun broke forth above 
the waiting travellers, shining- on the shower that was now beneath 
their feet. As they passed on down to the valley the trees, the 
wayside weeds and dripping vines, the very stones, glistened and 

shone under the dancing 
sunlight, while below them 
the clouds were scattering in 
little puffs like smoke, and 
distant mutterinos broug-ht 
word that the spectacle was 
over. 

Down thev go rattline 
over the stones at a orreat 
; ,^1 pace, for Palenville and din- 
ner are ahead and much must 
be done yet this day. Quar- 
ters secured for the nieht, 
arrangements made about 
receiving the baggage that is 
to be sent down, and dinner 
eaten with great zest but 
short ceremony, the horses 
arc put to the wagon and 
they again ascend the moun- 

AimST ROCK AND PALENVILLE OVERLOOK. tain, tllis tiuiC by the oM 

Kaaterskill Clove road, with the desio-n of walking back throuo-h 

o o o 

the ravine. " To the Laurel House," the order is given, and there 
is the chief delight of the day, for there is the sanctum, or rather 
the prison and keep of the far-famed " Kaaterskill fall." 

" How prosaic — how vulgar ! " cries Mrs. Schuyler, " to walk 
down wooden steps in a spot like this ! Oh, I really can't — I much 
prefer clambering down some other way ! " 




44 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

" Well, you '11 think differently when you come up," sugg-ested 
her husband. 

Down at the bottom of the ravine they look up at the amphi- 
theatre almost covered with dripping mosses, and fringed at top 
with drooping pines. It is all very lovely, but pretty Miss Polly 
voices a general sentiment when she exclaims disappointedly ; 

" Is that all there is of it ? That little thread of water? " 

Indeed it did seem a ver}- little stream to make such a fuss about. 
The Artist smiled; he had been here betore and knew the trick. 

" Come down," he said, " under the lower tall, and then look up." 

From that point the little house built just above the precipice 
looked like a tin\- bird-cage. 

"Oh. look now !' cries Miss Polly clapping her hands with 
pleasure. High up in the air a white cloudy mass springs far out 
and falls in a foaming torrent. Down, down it comes till at the 
toot of the tirst fall it strikes the glassy surface of the pool, and 
rushes throup-h it like a white snake. Over the second and smaller 
fall it comes and falls at their very teet in a drenching shower of 
spray. It is a humiliating thought that this beautiful mountain stream 
should be dammed up and turned on at twenty-five cents a piece 
for the lovers of nature, but we should have only the little thread 
of water all summer otherwise, whereas now for a consideration we 
get all the majesty of the spring floods let on. 

" It must have looked like that the first time it came down over 
that rock. ' 

" What do you mean ? ' said Miss Rutherford, looking for his 
explanation to the Literary Fellow ; •• was it not always here ? ' 

" You do not then know the legend? " 

" Tell it — tell it' " demands Miss Perkins eagerly, while Captain 
Oldbore looks impatient at such an absurd proposal. 

'• It is too long to tell now, but this evening, it you wish " 



^sn 




ON lOr LP HAINES FALLb 



46 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



" Of course, " breaks in Mrs. Schuyler," the shower has cooled the 
air so that we shall need a fire on th.e hearth this evening, and 
I saw a place for one at our boarding-house. That will be just the 
thing! " 

\\ ------ 1 ) Captain Oldbore said some- 



\ I 




^■ 



,, V, ™viv thing about a little paper on 
' b v^ Ji '^'\ revolutionary days he had 
\ \'^t iM^ hoped to read them to-night. 
" By all means," consents 
the amiable lady, " we will 
make that sort of thing the fea- 
ture of our evenings." 

Miss Perkins is no lonofer 
able to restrain her feelings at 
the prospect of an evening with 
what promises to be a dreary 
feast of facts. 

" Now, my dear captain, this 
region is sacred to the Indian, 
and I must beg that you will 
not intrude your pushing and 
uninteresting whites till we are 
-"iS^iiS; safely at home ! " 

Miss Rutherford averted 
any further trouble and smooth- 
ed down the old man's ruffled 
DRUTiNi; ROCK. Vanity by calling him aside to 

give an opinion on the family name of a pretty vetch that clung 
to the rocks near by. 

Now for Haines' Falls and that gorge, stopping by the way at 
Dripping Rock and at the Land Slide for the prettiest of views 





HAINKS FALLS 



48 



THE (.AND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



down the winding clove. At Hainesville the wagon is dismissed 
and they begin their scramble down through the rocky gorge. 
Fawn's Leap, Buttermilk Falls, and Belle Falls come each in turn, 
and each holds its own peculiar attraction undimmed by the rest. 
Not far from Palenville the ravine widens into a little valley, and 
the stream is bordered by wide stretches of green turf Square 
ridges of green grass surround old cellars partially filled with rub- 
bish, over which wild blackberry vines run riot and cover the un- 




AKl 1ST GROTTO. 

sightliness. Golden-rod and purple asters choke the doorwaj's, 
and clumps of old-fashioned garden annuals mingle their sweet- 
ness with the tall grass ; sweet-williams, pinks, and now and then 
a shrub, where the path must have led to the door. This is a 
veritable " Deserted Village," and here Captain Oldbore's facts 
began to prove useful. He told them it was the ruins of an old 
tannery with its settlement of workmen's cottages. Tanning 




49 



THE CASCADES OF HAINES' FALLS. 



50 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

hides was once the most flourishing industry of all this region, but 
as the hemlock bark was exhausted it died a natural death. Acres 
upon acres of trees are felled, stripped, and left, the parching sum- 
mer wind dries the dead wood to tinder, and then some chance 
spark sets going a conflagration that sometimes lasts for weeks in 
the autumn gales. 

" Sir," concludes the excited captain, now in lull tilt on one of 
his hobbies — " Sir, we are a most unthritt)-, wasteful people! Thus, 
from year to year, we recklessly devastate our forests, lay bare the 
sources of our streams, and so are gradually changing the climate 
itself! " 

Pleasant, indeed, was the fire that night as they all gathered 
about it in the big Palenville boarding-house. There was a frosty 
touch in the air and they spread their hands to the blaze with a 
genuine sense of comfort. 

'• Now for the legend, Mr. Grant," and Mrs. Schuyler settles 
back in her comfortable chair; " you know you promised! " 

And thus, by the flickering light of a fire on the hearth, they 

listened to 

THE BIRTH OF THE KAATERSKILL. 

"A legend that grew in the forest's hush 
Slowly as tear-drops gather and gush, — 
***** 

It grew and grew, 
From the pine-trees gathering a sombre hue, 
Till it seems a mere murmur out of the vast 
Norwegian forests of the past." — Lowell. 

In the far off days behind us, in the time when legend and 
fairy tale and childhood's lore was true, when every cave, and 
ravine, and waterfall had its spirit, good or evil, these mountains 
were sacred ground to the superstitious Indian, and it was with 
wary steps and fearful heart he explored their secret places for 



52 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

wild beasts, and the shyest birds of the wilderness. Here the great 
Manitou held sway in a high place, and sent forth his emissaries 
in the liofhtninof and thunder, or the balms' west winds that draw 
down through their cloves sometimes on a sultry midsummer day. 
Held in the highest veneration, no human quarrels were allowed 
to intrude on Manitou's battle-ground, and however loud he might 
thunder and war on stormy nights, as his approving spirits clashed 
in warfare, on this sacred ground the red man's scalping-knife was 
sheathed, and his arrow never found here its way to any human 
heart. Seldom, indeed, did the Indian come up here, save to hunt 
the bear or catamount, or to cross over througji the Palenville 
clove trail to make war on the peaceful Catskill natives. 

Along the river the Indians were more peaceful than the war- 
like tribes of the six nations, who dwelt beyond the mountains, 
spread over all the country to Lake Erie on the west and Ontario 
on the north. The peaceful river-dwellers cultivated plantations 
of corn and beans, and lived, according to the accounts of early 
navigators who explored the Hudson, a quiet and somewhat 
domestic life. They were of the great Mohican nation, and held 
a tradition of an origin in the west where their enemies, the Mo- 
hawks, now held sway. This tradition preserved among them, 
caused them to resent with intense bitterness the marauding wars 
of the tribes from beyond the mountains, who made occasional de- 
scents upon their fertile fields, destroying sometimes a year's work 
in a day, and murdering or killing all they could catch, while the 
children they carried away in captivity, to be brought up as 
Mohawks themselves. 

Hendrick Hudson, in his account of his voyage in the " Half 
Moon " in 1609, gives some descriptions of these people and of 
their habits. 

He says : " At night we came to other high mountains which 



54 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

lie from the river-side. There we found very loving people, and 
very old men where we were well used. Our boat went to fish, 
and caught great store of very good fish. 

"The sixteenth, fair and very hot weather. In the morning 
our boat went again to fishing, but caught very few, by reason 
their canoes had been there all night. This morning the people 
came aboard and brought us ears of Indian corn and pompions 
(squashes) and tobacco ; which we bought for trifles. We rode 
still all day and filled fresh water ; at night we weighed and went 
two leasfues hiofher, and had shoald water ; so we anchored till 
day." 

At Schodac, he enters in his journal the following : " I sailed to 
the shore in one of their canoes, with an old man who was chief 
of a tribe consisting of forty men and seventeen women. These 
I saw there in a house well-constructed of oak bark, and circular in 
shape, so that it had the appearance of being built with an arched 
roof. It contained a great quantity of maize, or Indian corn, and 
beans of last year's growth ; and there lay near the house, for the 
purpose of drying, enough to load three ships, besides what was 
erowine in the fields. On our coming into the house, two mats 
were spread out to sit upon and some food was immediately served 
in well-made wooden bowls. Two men were also dispatched at 
once, with bows and arrows, in quest of game, who soon brought 
in a pair of pigeons which they had shot. They likewise killed a 
fat dog, and skinned it in great haste, with shells which they had 
got out of the water. They supposed I would remain with them 
for the night ; but I returned in a short time on board the ship. 
The land is the finest for cultivation that I ever in my life set foot 
upon, and it also abounds in trees of every description. These 
natives are a very good people, for when they saw that I would 
not remain, they supposed that I was afraid of their bows ; and 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 55 

taking their arrows, they broke them in pieces and threw them into 
the fire." 

So it was these " very loving people " of the river, above Esopus, 
the Catskill Indians, lived in peace and prosperity under their chief 
Mayna, cultivating their lands and handing down to their children 
the traditions of their forefathers, in which lore their tribe, the 
Mohicans, were rich. 

Not so, however, with their enemies, the Mohawks, beyond 
the mountains. With them the art of war was imbibed with the 
mother's milk, and all their tales about the fires were of blood and 
battles, and the adventures of the braves with their enemies. Their 
education was devoted to the development of endurance and 
bravery, and their religion, like most of the Indians, was chiefly a 
placating of the dread Manitou and the various demons and giants 
that waged unseen war against them. High Peak was the home 
of the Great Spirit, and the woods around it a sacred grove where 
once yearly they came to perform their religious dance about a 
huge fire at midnight. Tradition says that in the far-away past, when 
there was no water in Palenville clove, that part of the mountains 
was the favorite hunting-ground of Manitou ; and indeed, after a 
climb through that fairy-like region on a bright June day, the super- 
stition is easily believed. Nature seems to have made a peculiar 
effort to adorn each rock and tree and wandering pathway with 
lichen and moss and vine and delicate maiden-hair fern. All shades 
of green are these, ever shifting and changing as the leaves stir and 
glisten, with inter-lines of fine gray moss, and the blood- red splashes 
of liver-wort on the varied carpet under foot, while all about are 
hiding branches of blossom, white and pink or vivid scarlet ; it is a 
fugue in colors — a soul-stirring harmony, that repeats itself in 
echoing refrains all writ in nature's pigments. Here, great Mani- 
tou walked at noon-day undisturbed, for in that remote time, no 
trail was made through this clove. 



56 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

Now among the western tribes beyond the mountain appeared 
a great wonder — a snov/- white maiden with flaxen hair and blue 
eyes ! Their cliief, when away alone, on an expedition to prove 
his prowess, had found her, he said, beneath a tree, down in the 
South-river (Delaware-river) country, wrapped in white blankets 
of exquisite fineness. The little one was looked upon as a gift 
from the Great Spirit, an omen of his favor, and was forthwith 
treated as a goddess. No goddess could wed with mortal man, 
so she was vowed to virginity, and once a year was taken to 
Manitou's mountains, and in the sacred clove left for a week to his 
holy protection and ministration. This ceremony, however, was 
not inaugurated till her eighteenth year. 

As she was clothed in white when first found, they continued 
to make her garments of that hue, and "The White Maiden " was 
her title. Very beautiful she was said to have been, and wise as 
well, for her advice was asked as if she were an oracle, and her 
commands were followed with fidelity. 

One May-time they carried the maid to the sacred spot, pla- 
cing in her lodge made all of white skins, procured at great 
pains, cakes of maize, meat, and lentils, and then they went away 
and left her weeping at her lonely plight. Not long did her tears 
flow, however, for soon a slight noise in the forest startled her, 
and springing up in terror she espied, approaching, a beautiful youth 
of some tribe unknown to her. Makincf sicrns which all Indians, 
even of widely separated tribes, readily comprehend, he assured 
her of his good-will, and promised to protect her in her lonely 
stay. Her fears at rest, she listened to him, and soon learned to 
love him, and hand in hand they wandered through the beautiful 
region like happy children. So they remained in the joy and inno- 
cence of childish love till the time drew near for the warriors of 
the Mohawks to reclaim her ; then the strange youth departed, 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



57 



promising to come to her at this time the following year, and en- 
joining on her strict secrecy. They made their farewells with many 
tears, and the beautiful stranger disappeared down the clove, going 
toward the river. On the morrow the Mohawks took away the 
White Maiden, and from the new look of happiness in her tear- 
stained eyes they guessed she had seen the great Manitou, her 
father, and forebore from questioning her. For several years this 




DELAWARE VALLEY. 



idyl was repeated, till at last the youth one May-time found him- 
self unable to tear himself from the side of his mountain love, and 
so disaster came upon them. 

Lingering with her till the last day, he persuaded her to go 
eastward with him to his own people and there to abide, and she at 
last consented. Wandering thus away from the white lodge they 
forgot in their love and happiness the danger of detection before 



58 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

leaving the mountain, and the Mohawks, finding the lodge deserted, 
separated to search the mountain side for their lost goddess. One 
of these searchers spied the lovers sitting on a mossy bank, and 
immediately ran to tell his companions. Just at this time the 
beauty was imposing a task on her swarthy lover ; it was to bring 
her, from a point far down the rugged ravine, a bunch of blue- 
bells she had noticed there a short time before, hanging over a 
dizzy height. The youth sprang down from stone to stone, clinging 
here and there to overhanging branches and was soon lost to 
sight. Stillness reigned in the shaded chasm, and the leaves cast 
little flecks of moving shadow over the white leggings and snowy 
blanket of the girl, and her long wavy hair fell in a golden shower 
down her back. She leaned forward, watching the dense growth 
below for some sign of moving branch, and listening for a 
sound of cracking twig to give token of the youth's return. 
Suddenly a wild yell above her re-echoed from side to side of the 
rock-bound ravine, and seemed enclosing her in a mad babel of 
sound. Starting up, she stood a moment with her hand pressed 
to her breast, then seeing the advancing Mohawks as they came 
rushing down the mountain, she seemed to divine with quick in- 
stinct what they were seeking, and the hideous punishments that 
awaited her lover, if he were caught. Instantlyshe turned and darted 
down the clove like a flash of white light as the sun shone on her 
garments where the shade divided as she passed. Down, down, 
and the quick feet behind her coming nearer, while the savage 
cries seemed in her very ears ! Much farther she cannot go, for 
here is the precipice of the Kaaterskill, descending straight across 
the vale with sheer fall into dark, stony depths. Springing to the 
rocky platform, at its edge she paused and turned, her blanket partly 
falling from her gleaming shoulders, then, as if with sudden resolve, 
as the yells came nearer, and the hands of her friends were 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



59 



stretched out to save her, she sprang into mid-air, her hair 

streaming out behind her and mingling with the folds of her 

blanket. And now a great marvel came to pass, for before 

their eyes, dazzled by the sun-illumined garments, the maiden 

disappeared in a stream of water that plunged for the first time 

in the memory of 

man, over the cliff 

and went rushing 

down the gorge 

in white tumbling 

foam. It seemed 

to them that the 

snowy garments 

faded and melted mto 

a myriad glistening drops 

of spray, and the floatmg 

yellow hair became the 

srolden bars of sunlisfht on 

the water. So the great 

spirit took his daughter to 

himself, and the saddened 

and awe-struck savages went 

their homeward way, not 

daring now to wreak their 

vencreance on the Catskill 

o 

chief who caused all the 

trouble. But they never 

forgot, says tradition, the old score against the river Indians, 

and, till civilization drove them westward, they continued to 

wreak their vengeance on their enemies. 




THE MAID IN KAATERSKILL FALLS. 



6o THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

It is all a myth, of course, and yet at times by the witchino- 
light of a midsummer moon, if you tune your thoughts aright, 
the silvery white garments seem to gleam through the waters 
of Kaaterskill, and the face will almost shape itself, then fade 
away ; while the dripping, floating hair is often present near the 
top, before the water breaks in a misty veil of spray. 

There existed among the Indians when the first whites came 
to them a tradition that in early times a vessel had been wrecked 
on the Adantic coast and most of the crew drowned. The few 
who survived were pale of face, with flaxen or golden hair, 
and soon mixed with the tribe of the Tuscaroras, then inhabiting 
Virginia. The Tuscaroras afterward moved northward and came 
to western New York, still preserving this tradition of pale-faces. 
The two stories would seem to have some dim connection, and it 
is not beyond credence that Manitou's " White Maiden " was the 
deserted baby of some Northman of old. 

Amid the various comments on this tale, Captain Oldbore 
surprised every one by a gracious corroboration of part of it, 
which was the more to be wondered at because he had listened to 
its recital with evident impatience. 

" Now, that interesting fact about the ice-formation under the 
fall is stricdy true, and may be observed toward the latter part of 
February or early in March, when the slow accretions of frozen 
drops of spray have built a circular wall around the place where 
the water drops into the pool, but the instances of its reaching the 
top of the cliff are rare, though I have spoken with more than one 
mountaineer who has seen it." 

Mrs. Schuyler said civilly that " she hoped the story would 
soon appear in print," and Miss Rutherford was reminded of 
Bryant's verses on the Kaaterskill, which she recited : 



THE LAND OF RIP VAM WINKLE. 6i 



Midst greens and shades the Caaterskill leaps 
From cliffs where the wood-fiower clings ; 

All summer he moistens his verdant steps 

With the sweet light spray of the mountain springs, 

And he shakes the woods on the mountain side, 

When they drip with the rains of autumn-tide. 



But when, in the forest bare and old. 

The blast of December calls, 
He builds in the starlight, clear and cold, 

A palace of ice where his torrent falls, 
With turret, and arch, and fretwork fair, 
And pillars blue as the summer air. 



For whom are those glorious chambers wrought. 

In the cold and cloudless night ? 
Is there neither spirit nor motion of thought, 

In forms so lovely and hues so bright ? 
Hear what the gray-haired woodmen tell 
Of this wild stream and its rorkv dell. 



'T was hither a youth of dreamy mood, 

A hundred winters ago, 
Had wandered over the mighty wood, 

When the panther's track was fresh on the snow, 
And keen were the winds that came to stir 
The long dark boughs of the hemlock-fir. 



Too gentle of mien he seemed, and fair. 
For a child of those rugged steeps ; 

His home lay down in the valley where 
The kingly Hudson rolls to the deeps ; 

But he wore the hunter's frock that day. 

And a slender gun on his shoulder lav. 



62 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

And here he paused, and against the trunk 

Of a tall gray linden leant, 
Where the broad clear orb of the sun had sunk 

From his path in the frosty firmament. 
And over the round dark edge of the hill 
A cold green light was quivering still. 

And the crescent moon, high over the green, 

From a sky of crimson shone. 
On that icy palace whose towers were seen. 

To sparkle as if with stars of their own. 
While the water fell with a hollow sound, 
'Twixt the glistening pillars ranged around. 

Is that a being of life that moves 
Where the crystal battlements rise ? 

A maiden watching the moon she loves, 
At the twilight hour, with pensive eyes ? 

Was that a garment which seemed to gleam, 

Betwixt the eye and the falling stream ? 

'T is only the torrent tumbling o'er. 
In the midst of those glassy walls ; 

Gushing, and plunging, and beating the floor 
Of the rocky basin in which it falls. 

'T is only the torrent — but why that start ? 

Why gazes the youth with a throbbing heart ? 

He thinks no more of his home afar. 

Where his sire and sister wait ; 
He heeds no longer how star after star 

Looks forth on the night as the hour grows late ; 
He heeds not the snow-wreaths, — lifted and cast 
From a thousand boughs by the rising blast. 

His thoughts are alone of those who dwell 

In the halls of frost and snow, 
Who pass where the crystal domes upswell 

From the alabaster floors below, 
Where the frost-trees bourgeon with leaf and spray, 
And frost-gems scatter a silvery day. 

' And oh ! that those glorious haunts were mine ! ' 
He speaks, and throughout the glen 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 63 

Thin shadows swim in the faint moonshine, 

And take a ghastly likeness of men, 
As if the slain by the wintry storms 
Came forth to the air in their earthly forms. 

There pass the chasers of seal and whale, 

With their weapons quaint and grim. 
And bands of warriors in glittering mail. 

And herdsmen and hunters, huge of limb ; 
There are naked arms with bow and spear, 
And furry gauntlets the carbine rear. 

There are mothers, and oh ! how sadly their eyes 

On their children's white brows rest ! 
There are youthful lovers — the maiden lies 

In a seeming sleep, on the chosen breast ; 
There are fair, wan women, with moonstruck air, 
And snow-stars flecking their long loose hair. 

They eye him not as they pass along, 

But his hair stands up with dread. 
When he feels that he moves with that phantom throng, 

Till those icy turrets are over his head. 
And the torrent's roar as they enter seems 
Like a drowsy murmur heard in dreams. 

The glittering threshold is scarcely passed, 

When there gathers and wraps him round 
A thick white twilight, sullen and vast, 

In which there is neither form nor sound ; 
The phantoms, the glory, vanish all. 
With the dying voice of the waterfall. 

Slow passes the darkness of that trance. 

And the youth now faintly sees 
Huge shadows, and gushes of light that dance 

On a rugged ceiling of unhewn trees. 
And walls where the skins of beasts are hung. 
And rifles glitter, on antlers strung. 

On a couch of shaggy skins he lies ; 

As he strives to raise his head, 
JIard-featured woodmen with kindly eyes 

Come round him and smooth his furry bed, 



64 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

And bid him rest, for the evening star 
Is scarcely set, and the day is far. 

They had found at eve the dreaming one 

By the base of that icy steep ; 
When over his stiffening limbs begun 

The deadly slumber of frost to creep, 
And they cherished the pale and breathless form, 
Till the stagnant blood ran free and warm. 

Next morning the skies are gray, and a cold, soaking rain is 
falling. The disappointed pleasure-seekers look forth from be- 
hind their windows and conclude to give up all open-air plans and 
stay within doors warm, at least, and dry. The fire is alluring, 
and one by one they settle down for a morning with books and 
work and talk. Mrs. Schuyler is busy over a bit of knitting that 
she calls her " kill-time," but which her husband has dubbed " the 
spoil-sport," as he dreads with true masculine hostility her absorp- 
tion in its mysteries. Miss Rutherford is arranging her botanical 
specimens, while pretty Miss Polly is pulling the ears of a gray 
pussy-cat in her lap, and rubbing it gently under the chin. The 
Literary Fellow is occupied with watching this performance, while 
the Artist is making sly sketches of each one from his corner. As 
for the captain — not long since a dangerous gleam shone in his 
eye as he rose and stole quietly from the room. Now he returns 
with a neat roll of manuscript in his hand, at the sight of which an 
uneasy stir runs through the party, and Miss Perkins groans 
audibly. 

" I thought it an excellent opportunity to read you my pages 
on the ' Revolutionary Captivities.' In a few days more we shall 
be going through the river valley again, and that region as well as 
these mountains is concerned in the stories." 

Of course he was politely urged to read, so unrolling his pa- 
pers, he began at once. 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
REVOLUTIONARY CAPTIVITIES. 



65 



It was the custom of our English cousins, in the early days of 
revolt and trouble with the colonies, to use with unstinted zeal the 
hate and cruelty of the red man as weapons against their rebellious 
subjects. If the atmosphere be permeated with a subtle magnetic 
fluid, as some spiritualists assert, on which passing events are 
photographed in gesture and grouping of figures, then, to him who 
has the "second sight," the valleys of the Hudson and Mohawk 






III W^^Wr r-t izaj -^^'^ 




GEORGE hall's HOUSE. 

rivers unroll one long panorama of human agony. Rapine, arson, 
and murder marshal their forces in the ghostly procession. Wild 
arms are raised to heaven in vain appeals for help. Women and 
children are fleeing from demons in war-paint and feathers who 
are in hot pursuit, while the smoke from burning barns and home- 
steads seems to rise like incense to the heathen gods of War and 
Death. Give voice to this phantasmagoria of horrors, and what a 
wail of agony goes up in accusation ! Who was to blame ? 

Perhaps the captivities were a degree worse than immediate 
murder, for in the one case there ensued the long march through 
the great forests and across mountains and rivers to Canada, where, 



66 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

if the wretched one lived to reach that destination, there awaited 
him impressment into the British service, or an imprisonment 
whose horrors were equal to his previous tortures by the savages ; 
in the other case the tomahawk was at least a merciful shortening 
of the death. 

About two miles west of Catskill lived in those troubled days 
the Dutch family of Schermerhorns. One son had married a 
dauo-hter of Mr. Scrope, who lived on Roundtop Mountain. An- 
other son, Frederic, was one day sent to the mountain where 
his brother had taken up his abode with his wife's people to obtain 
his services in helping to get the Schermerhorn sheep driven 
down from their mountain pasture. Arrived at his destination, 
and greatly wearied from his long day's journey, he soon retired 
to rest. In the early morning he was aroused by the screams of 
his sister-in-law, who was alarmed by the appearance of some 
Indians who were approaching the house. Long afterward, in 
telling the story to his children Frederic used to recall how his dog 
had howled when he left home the day before, and then he would 
add : " Mine kindern, petter stay to home ven te dog howls ! " 

Drawing on his clothes quickly he ran down stairs to find the 
family in great alarm. Mr. Scrope had been at work in the fields 
but was coming back to the house now, having seen the approach 
of the savages. Meanwhile the warriors seemed friendly enough 
with their " How-do's " and inquiries for Bastyon, a son of the 
house who was then absent in Saugerties. It was afterward 
thought that their object in coming was to seize and kill this 
Bastyon, who had once served them a mean trick in stealing from 
them some hatchets and knives. Finding their inquiries for 
the delinquent to be in vain, they concluded to satisfy their grudge 
in some other way, and so began plundering the house, thereby 
trying the frugal soul of \>ouw Scrope, who wept and fumed to no 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



67 



good purpose. One brave, possessed of unusual discernment spied 
the linen-chest in the corner, and breaking it open seized a 
long uncut piece of the home-spun, and trailing it proudly behind 
him boasted : " Make Indian good shirt! " This was more than 
could be endured by the woman who had spun and woven it with 




DOG S HOLE, PALENVILLE. 



her own hands, and making a dash at the impious red man, Vrouw 
Scrope shouted : " You no hef dat ! dat Bastyon's piece ! " 

Old Mr. Scrope coming in at this juncture was filled with 
horror at his wife's rashness and cried : " Vor Cot's sake, let dem 
hef vat dey vill, you lose your het yet ! " But the warning proved 
of no avail, for what was a Dutch vrouw's life worth to her 



68 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

despoiled of her store of linen, and the Indian soon settled the 
point by killing the brave woman and laying her husband dead 
beside her. The daughter, while this scene was being enacted 
and all the Indians intent upon the issue, quickly snatched her baby 
from the bed, and gathering her three other children together, fled 
with them through a back door and hid with them in a field of rye. 

The Indians soon fired the house and left, bearing with them 
much plunder, including, no doubt, " Bastyon's piece," so valiandy 
defended, and the boy Schermerhorn as a captive. 

At their departure the terrified young mother crept from her 
hiding-place, and with her little ones followed the Kiskatom creek 
to the house of Mr. Timmerman, five miles away. Meanwhile the 
husband, Schermerhorn, returned from his two days' journey to 
mill, and found his home in ashes, with no trace of its inmates 
but a few charred bones. Half crazed with grief at the possible 
fate of his family, he at last found his wife and children and learned 
from them the death of his parents and the captivity of his younger 
brother. He quickly formed a party of men and went in pursuit 
of the savages, but as well pursue the east wind, for their path 
over the mountains was as trackless. 

The story of the long march, the days of hunger and parching 
thirst, through the summer heat, the weary feet bleeding and sore, 
and yet the lips not daring to complain lest the tomahawk should 
quickly settle all, makes a sad history indeed. 

One night, encamped near Schoharie, the Indians drew forth 
the scalps of the murdered Scropes and proceeded to dry them 
on little hoops before the fire. One of the men, making a third 
hoop, suddenly sprung up with a savage yell and made a dash at 
Schermerhorn, who now stood transfixed with fright. Seizing the 
boy by the hair, he made passes at him with the scalping-knife, 
when the poor youth could endure no more and fell fainting with 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 69 

terror and exhaustion at his captor's feet. The other Indians, im- 
mensely diverted by this witty sally on the part of their companion, 
rolled over and over on the trround screamin^r with lausrhter. On 
another occasion the lad was made to " run the gauntlet," a hideous 
custom rigidly adhered to by all Indians bearing away captives. 
When approaching a settlement of friendly savages, the prisoner 
was stripped naked and compelled to pass between two lines of 
the villagers, whose custom was to shower on the victim all kinds 
of torments in the shape of blows, pricks, and cuts from sharp 
knives. Lucky was the man who came through the ordeal alive. 

At Fort Niagara — Ne-a-^«(2-ra the Indians called it always — 
Schermerhorn's captors received eight dollars apiece for the 
scalps they brought, that being the usual bounty paid by the Brit- 
ish for such rebel head-gear, and lorty dollars for their prisoner, 
who was forthwith impressed into the army. From that time he 
saw no more of home or friends till the year after the close of the 
war, when he wandered back and at last found his parents living 
in Hudson. 

Along the line of the Hudson River, about half a mile from its 
west bank, runs a line of abruptly rising hills, called " The Col- 
laberg." Near Catskill they dip suddenly to the westward into a 
narrow valley, across which hills rise again in higher crests toward 
the mountains. Where Kaaterskill creek comes winding down from 
its birthplace in the Catskills, and crosses this lovely little valley, 
there spreads out a plateau of fertile farm-land. There, in a shel- 
tered spot, by a glassy pool, where willows dip and swing to their 
long reflections in the water, and swallows go darting in and out 
through the long summer afternoons, the Abiel family had reared 
a home that was more like a rude fortress for tlieir household 
gods. The house is of stone, as the houses of the prosperous 
Dutch were in those times, low and wide-spreading, with small 



70 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

windows, easily defended, and a great oaken house-door divided 
across midway. 

One evening, in the spring of 1 781, the cows were chewing 
peaceful cuds in the farm-yard, the hens were on the roost, and all 
things outside had a " ready-for-bed " aspect, while within the 
family were seated at supper. The Dutch were a silent folk, and 
the Abiels were no exception to the rule, so that the picture of the 
supper, viewed through the open upper half of the great door, was 
that of a noiseless, pantomimic feast. Was it a real scene, or only 
a vision ? Evidently the spectators, lurking without, determined 
to try what stuff it might be made of, for suddenly a terrific war- 
whoop filled all the quiet place with unearthly clamor. The family 
spang up as one man, so schooled were they to expect danger, and 
reached for the guns kept loaded and resting on brackets attached 
to the huge beams overhead. But it was too late, and before a 
blow could be struck they were surrounded by a band of Mohawks. 
The treacherous slaves of the household either slunk away in hid- 
ing or aided the Indians in securing the captives. The woman and 
children were not molested, nor would David Abiel have been 
taken, but for his incautious exclamation on recognizing one of his 
Tory neighbors in his disguise of an Indian, and crying aloud 
in his indignation : " What, is dat you ! " 

Long years after, a sister of David Abiel was fond of relating 
the story of the seizure, and how she had retained her presence of 
mind sufficiently to slip under the table and take ofif the men's shoe- 
and knee-buckles, anticipating their probable captivity ! No 
climax of life or death could engross the Knickerbocker mind to 
the exclusion of thrift. 

Garrett Abiel, one of the younger sons, had been absent dur- 
ing the day at Domine Schunneman's, and, returning in the even- 
ing, heard the noises in the house and immediately understood 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 71 

what had happened. Hurrying away, he secured the help of a 
near neighbor, and, returning, hid in the bushes near the barn. 
As the savages passed out with their captives, young Abiel raised 
his gun to shoot, but the neiglibor stopped him, saying : " You 
might kill your own father ! " 

So the party passed along unhindered, to the rendezvous at Pine 
Orchard on the mountains. Here they encamped, for Brant was in- 
festing the mountains, preparing for a general descent upon the val- 
ley ; meanwhile, parties were sent out here and there for Whig cap- 
tives. Old David Abiel's reputation for patriotism, or attachment 
to the cause of " rebellion," was as great as his fame for honesty and 
bravery, so that he was, upon the whole, valuable, though too old 
now for a soldier. So well was his character for probity recog- 
nized, that some of his Tory neighbors in disguise, consorting 
with Brant's men, induced the savages to put him on parole, think- 
ing that the surest way to prevent him from making his escape. 
At the close of their stay on the mountains, a large party of Whigs 
from the valley made an attack, with the purpose of rescuing the 
captives. Successful in the case of some of the victims, they failed 
to rescue the Abiels, because of this very parole of the old man's. 
Left in the rear of the departing Indians, they found the old man 
plodding doggedly along after his red-skinned enemies, and 
called upon him loudly to stop and turn about in his march. 

" But no ! " cried the honest Dutchman, whose brain was in- 
capable of entertaining more subtle distinctions of morality than 
just abstract right and wrong, "I hef given my word to the sal- 
vaofes, end I must eo with them ! " 

Then there was a great time made over his obstinacy, and 
his duty held up before him in various guises. He was finally 
conjured, for the sake of his wife and children, to return and pro- 
tect them and their home. Still the old man was unmoved, stand- 



72 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

ing squarely and half defiantly, lest any one, more bold than the 
others, should lay hold of him and force him back to his home, and 
yet the tears were rolling down his honest cheeks as even his 
naturally unimaginative mind portrayed for him the trials and 
privations, perhaps even the death, that awaited him on the long 
westward march ; and, on the other hand, the welcome home 
where were his wife and loving children to soothe the cares of 
coming years. It was a hard thing for these good neighbors to 
fight, at risk of life, for the liberty of a man who would not take it 
when it came, but only said, staunchly, as if defending his honor : 
" Want wat baat het een mensch zoo hij de eehule wereld o-e- 
wint, en lijdt schade zijner zeile. Of wot zal een mensch geren, 
tot lossing van zijne zeile ! " These are the words of Matthew : 
" What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose 
his soul ? " 

The domine came up at this pass, and hearing the state of 
things gazed on his parishioner with a sorrowful heart, saying : " I 
am sorry ; and I am rejoiced. Such honor is seen but in the true- 
hearted and God shall reward it — our good Dutch Church is rep- 
resented in you this day. and the fame thereof will go far among 
the Gentiles," then the good old man lifted up his voice in 
prayer, ending with the solemn apostolic benediction in Dutch : 
" De genade onzes Heeven Jesus Christus zij met uwen geest ! 
Amen." And Elder Abiel turned back to trace the weary road to 
his captivity. 

There are many versions of this captivity, one as authentic as 
another, perhaps, but I choose this one with its noble picture 
of the old Dutchman whose simple heart was incapable 
of a broken promise, choosing hardship and pain — per- 
haps death itself — with the consciousness of an unsullied honor, 
rather than home and love and the peaceful joys of declining years, 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 73 

purchased with a violated parole. Bless his old heart ! I can see 
him yet, with his short, bandy legs clad in long hose and short 
trunks, with his broad back and big hat, trudging honestly over 
the trail toward Hunter. And yet there is, of course, an element 
of absurdit)' in it all too. Did so simple a device as carrying him 
off home whether or no never occur to the simple Boermen ? 
Surely they could so have saved his honor and his sacrifice at once. 

The rage and disgust of his son Anthony must have been great 
next morning, when the old man walked into the Indian camp by 
Schoharie Kill and gave himself up. 

Having spoken to the leader in the Indian tongue. Elder 
Abiel was asked where he learned that language. Receiving in 
reply the answer that he had formerly been a trader among the 
Mohawks, they treated him with some kindness during the re- 
mainder of his journey. His son Anthony was obliged to run the 
gauntlet more than once, and at the best showing they had 
enough of hunger and fatigue and every hardship to endure. 

On reaching the fort at Niagara, David Abiel was soon re- 
leased on account of his age, but Anthony was kept for two years 
longer in a vain attempt to force him into the British service, 
when he escaped with the Snyders, an account of whose captivity 
is found below. 

About a mile north of the Blue Mountain Dutch Church, which 
stands on a breezy hill-top, face to face with the panorama of the 
Catskills, on a farm now in possession of the Valks, stands the 
ruin of Captain Elias Snyder's homestead. Seemingly alone and 
deserted now, it is yet haunted by ghostly memories that figure in 
long by-gone dramas. To one of a sensitive lanc)' it is an evil 
place of a dark night. I am told that it is no vmcommon occurrence 
for the old rooms to be once more lighted up with tallow-dips and 
for the bright fire of Iocts to be kindled aeain in the ereat cavern 



74 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

of a fireplace. Then the broad Dutch lasses with their long braids 
hanging from under the closely-tied caps, their quilted petticoats 
balancing with the rigidity of big bells of brass, go swinging down 
the centre of a reel, hand-in-hand with their " Garretjes " and 
"Jacobs " and " Tjerks," whose breadth of beam in their duck-tail 
coats, brave in huge buttons, is something marvellous to behold. 
Sometimes it is a pas-seid which some awkward gallant executes 
under the festoons of dried apples and red peppers that hang from 
the beams. 

The fun grows more excited, the lights flare up and gros- 
muder is seen through the window preparing to open the little 
door of the big oven beside the fireplace. 

She is old and wrinkled, with a baleful light in her wicked eye, 
as she leans with her long-handled shovel on which to slide out 
the goodies baking in there. She lifts the latch when — puff! A 
great blaze leaps out and devours her bodily before your eyes, and 
not only her but the dancers, the dried apples, the red peppers, and 
all in a fiery cauldron ! The moon has risen behind the old house 
and now it shines, a crreat red ball, throusjh sash-less windows and 
sill-less door- ways. And yet they say it is not all an illusion of the 
moonlight — but to my story. 

The Snyders were wood-choppers, and yet the father of 
the family was also captain of militia, such were the mixed condi- 
tions of this primitive life. As an officer of the rebels this captive 
was a prize coveted by his Tory neighbors, since the reward given 
for him, dead or alive, would be high. His danger was great as his 
daily work led him away in the forest, sometimes quite alone, and 
sometimes accompanied only by his son, Elias. One day they were 
startled, while at work, by perceiving two parties of Tories and 
Indians coming upon them from opposite directions. Dropping 
their axes they ran wildly toward home, closely pursued by the 
enemy. 




PROFILE ROCK. 



76 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

Among the Indians were two men well known to the set- 
tlers as " John Rumj} " and "Hank's Ben." Nearing the house, 
the Snyders found themselves cut off from safety there by another 
party coming to meet them, so they stopped running and gave up. 
Captain Snyder felt himself fortunate to get off with his life 
and only a scalp wound, even though he must go into captivity. 

The savages now proceeded to the house, from which the 
women and children had fled to the woods, and rifled it of cloth- 
ing, provisions, and money. Dividing the booty into packs, the 
captors led the road, over which so many weaiy feet had passed to 
Canada, or perished by the way. 

Winding up the " clove " in the mountain the trail was a path- 
way fit for fairy travellers. A carpet of soft gray and green moss, 
with now and then a patch of the graceful partridge-berry, that 
prettiest of ground-runners, or the nodding plumes of princes- 
feather, or the rich red-splashed leaves of the liver-wort, while 
overhead arched whispering birches, whose white trunks gleamed 
through the twilight of the forest like the robes of slim maidens 
clad in bridal garments. Now and then a rustle, or a darting 
form, gave hint of the wild pulsing life hidden in the heart of 
the groves whose privacy these stealthy, murderous steps were in- 
vading. But these lovely and delicate forms had no attraction for 
those, who leaving home and friends for a long foot-journey filled 
with danger and suffering, could think only of the simple joys and 
home-peace left behind, and the torture and death that might 
lurk ahead. 

Taking an oblique path across the mountains they passed 
through Palenville clove, and there one of the Indians climbed 
upon a ledge near Profile Rock to look back over the valley before 
proceeding farther. His two captives clambered up after him, and 
here it was that, hidden by a projecting rock from the savages 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 77 

below, Elias Snyder would have killed him, but the more prudent 
father restrained his son, and thus one chance ot liberty passed 
b)-, and the Indian never guessed his danger. From here they 
went southward across Pine Orchard near where the Laurel 
House now stands, and so over between the two lakes to the 
Schoharie Kill, which they waded breast high, walking on ten 
miles farther without changing their clothes. At the head of the 
Schoharie Kill, in a ravine, was kept a store of corn for the wants of 
the tribe as they went back and forth on these long marches, and 
their hunting expeditions. Here they supplied themselves, and here 
it was that " my poy, Elias," gave evidence of his Dutch shrewd- 
ness. Finding his share of the burden too heavy to suit him 
he began complimenting one of the braves on his great strength, 
whereupon the besetting vanity of the Indian induced him to 
transfer the larger part of Elias' corn to his own j^ack and carry it 
away on his proud shoulders. Coming to the Genesee River 
they met there a white woman of about twenty-five years of 
age, in Indian dress, and carrying in her arms a baby in whose face 
the Indian and white blood were traceable. Beside her was her 
husband, a Seneca chief. She asked the Snyders many questions 
about their homes and people, telling them that she had been 
taken captive in the old French war and the Indians had brought 
her up as one of themselves. She knew nothing now of her 
people or their fate, and said that she felt no desire to return 
to the whites. They were much struck by her beauty and intel- 
ligence. 

A funny example of the Indian taciturnity, or perhaps his idea 
of courtesy, is given by Rockwell in his " Catskill Mountains." 
He says : " The Indian who tomahawked Captain Snyder shaved 
him twice a week but never spoke of, nor seemed to notice 
the wounds on his head. 



78 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

The Snyders after their arrival at Niagara were sent to Mon- 
treal, where they were closely questioned by the British officers, 
and then assigned to a filthy and crowded prison called the " Berot." 
Their food was stinted and of poor quality, they were infested with 
vermin, and, to add to their suffering, they were treated with great 
inhumanity by the Hessian guards. They often heard in Montreal 
the yell customary on entering the town with scalps, and saw from 
their prison windows the hideous trophies carried by in triumph, 
strung on long poles. 

After a while the Snyders, and the Abiels of Catskill, who had 
come hither during the previous year, were billeted on parole 
among the Canadians of the little island of Jesu, farther up the 
river. Rockwell mentions as one of the hardships they had here 
to endure, that " the women were many and ill-natured, and 
tried to prevent their making tea ! " 

In August, 1782, Captain Abiel was sent home under escort, 
being over fifty, and hence not formidable as an active enemy, nor 
useful as an impressed soldier. It was only the scalps of the old 
men, and of women and children, that were of value. 

Here our captives lived in the little settlement for some months 
in comparative peace, despite the numerous and anti-tea women, 
and now they began to lay plans for another escape. And many 
a careful parley was necessary to undertake so hazardous an enter- 
prise, for even supposing they could pass the argus eyes of their 
watchful enemies, there lay before them the march of several 
hundred miles through a trackless wilderness without a guide ; and 
of necessity, with no provision for their hunger other than the 
watchful care of Him who cares for the sparrows. One obstacle 
to their plans lay in the impossibility of convincing Captain Snyder 
that his parole was a matter of no binding character. Argue as 
they would, he came back always to the one point — a man's word 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 79 

is his oath, and there was an end of the matter. A Dutchman's 
word of honor in those days was as great a security as iron chains. 
At last, however, the conditions of the parole were thoughtlessly 
broken in some way not given, by the officers themselves, and the 
scrupulous Hollander felt himself released from the bond. 

The party obtained, without difficulty, a passport to Montreal, 
where they purchased as great curiosities, pretending ignorance of 
their use, three pocket compasses. The Fourth of July being at 
hand they provided themselves with four gallons of wine, says my 
trusty chronicler, two of rum, and sufficient loaf-sugar to sweeten 
this most ungodly drink, and then they set themselves about the 
work of " celebration." We are not told that the Abiels and 
Snyders, now three in all, consinned this amount unaided, but I am 
unable to find any trace of more members of the celebrating party. 

The loth of September was the day finally fixed upon for es- 
cape ; accordingly, while the Canadian family upon whom they 
were quartered were at supper, the Snyders procured three loaves 
of bread and some pork from the cellar, secreting them in a con- 
venient place. While vespers were in progress, they stole away, 
and joining the younger Abiel and a Chas. Butler, of Philadelphia, 
started for the lower end of the island. The night was stormy and 
dark, and the river swollen and very rough, but they finished that 
portion of the perilous journey in safety, landing several miles 
down the river. In a day or two they began the long march 
homeward, coming soon ujjon an encampment of Indians, whom 
they avoided just in time to escape a second capture. The great- 
est danger soon threatened them, for the bread now gave out and 
the awful problem of providing sustenance by the way appeared 
for solution. However, they pressed on, trusting to find some- 
thing to stay the pangs of hunger. In any event it were better to 
die in a determined efifort to reach home and the duties that called 



8o THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

so loudly for their presence, than to lie pent up on the little island 
while their neighbors and friends were fighting for liberty. 

After four days of hunger they found spignet root and lived on 
that till they reached the Connecticut River. Here, by the river- 
side, by a deserted camp-fire, " my poy Elias," ever lucky and 
thrifty, found the thigh-bone of a moose, the remnant of some 
hunter's feast. Nothing remained but the sinews and bone, but he 
burned it and, powdering it, lived on it for three days. Soon they 
succeeded in their efforts to catch trout in the river, and then the 
supply of rations began to improve. They concluded to cross the 
river, and Elias, attempting to swim it, narrowly escaped drown- 
ing, for, exhausted by fasting and fatigue, he sunk under the light 
burden of his pack, but making one vigorous effort gained shal- 
lower water and waded ashore. 

"Not far from this point" — I quote from Rockwell — "they 
found the first traces of civilized inhabitants. They ate black- 
berries, in a new field covered with them, and some two miles be- 
yond came to a log-house, the owner of which was working in a field. 
Captain Snyder and Abiel went toward him to inquire for pro- 
visions, while the others entered the cabin and helped themselves 
to part of a loaf of bread, which was all the provisions the poor 
man had. The same evening they went about a mile farther, to 
the house of a man named Williams, whose family kindly gave up 
to them their supper of hasty-pudding and moose pie. Here, they 
remained all night, and in the morning several of the neighbors 
came in with a magistrate named Ames, who, after examinino- 
them, furnished Captain Snyder with a passport for himself and 
his comrades to the head-quarters of General Bailey, at the lower 
Coos. They were now in New Hampshire, among a very humane 
and generous people, who liberally supplied their wants. But such 
was their appetite, after enduring extreme hunger, that they com- 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 8i 

monly ate six meals a day of light food, and thus made small pro- 
gress. Sunday, September :29th, they reached General Bailey's 
quarters, who received them with great kindness. He ordered 
shoes to be made and mended for them ; and there they remained 
two days, when Captain Snyder, having been furnished with a 
horse by the General, left his companions, and returned home 
through Massachusetts and Connecticut, crossing the Hudson 
River at Poughkeepsie. The others went by way of Sunderland 
and Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and crossed the river near Kinder- 
hook. Captain Snyder reached home first, where he found his 
relatives living and in good health. The joy of their meeting we 
need not attempt to describe." 

So ends the story of this captivity in Canada, but not the list 
of those who suffered in like manner. There were many others 
whose names we come upon here and there in dusty old chroni- 
cles, and many more whose names we know not, whose unnoticed, 
insignificant lives slipped away in the shade, and ended in wig- 
wams, long years after, in the far-away wilderness. Many women 
and litde children were taken, and very few of these ever reached 
Canada and the British. The braves took them for themselves, 
and the mothers wore away their darkened days carrying burdens, 
working the soil to raise corn and lentils, and bearing children to 
their loathed captors. Happy was she whose child was left to her 
then, at any price, for oftener the litde one and its mother found 
homes far asunder. 

One account of a capture by the Indians is very touching in its 
simple pathos. Among the Huguenots who settled near King- 
ston in those early days was Louis Dubois and his wife, Catharine 
Lefever Dubois, and three children. The wife and children were 
carried off with some other persons in one of the frequents attacks 
of unfriendly savages. The distracted husband sought for them 



82 THE LAND OF RTF VAN WINKLE. 

in vain, and at last, as all hope of ever finding his dear ones 
had left him, he one day received a visit from an Indian to whom 
he had once done a kindness. The Indian told him that by follow- 
ing the course of the Rondout, and then Wallkill Creek, branching 
off again along the course of a smaller tributary, the captives could 
be found in an Indian camp. It is worthy of note here, that 
the spot indicated was about one hundred yards east of the 
Shawangunk Creek, at a point very near where the Shawangunk 
Dutch Church now stands. 

Thus advised, Dubois immediately started with a small party of 
men, with dogs, guns, and provisions, marching through the torest 
twenty-six miles to the appointed place. 

Before reaching the camp the)^ met an Indian who wellnigh 
put a stop to the expedition by shooting at Dubois, but fortunately 
the arrow missed its mark, and Dubois, falling on the savage, killed 
him with his sword before the other Indians were warned of the 
approach of the rescuing party. 

Proceeding now with the greatest care, they came to a place 
where they could Ic^ok down from a slight eminence on the camp, 
where a remarkable scene met their eyes. The Indians were pre- 
paring to march westward, and had decided to kill their captives, 
thus obviating the necessity of feeding them on the journey. The 
wretched women and children were tied to trees, while about 
them were piled dried sticks and leaves showing the fiendish pur- 
pose of burning them alive. 

Mrs. Dubois, however, being a woman of great piety and faith, 
and possessed withal, of a marvellously sweet and powerful voice, 
say the old chronicles, in the midst of these preparations, began to 
sing, partly to encourage, perhaps, her terrified little ones, and also 
to sustain her own soul through this dreadful ordeal. The song 
that rose to her lips was a paraphrase of that beautiful psalm, 



THE LAND OF RIP VAM WINKLE. 



83 



descriptive of the captive Jews by the rivers of Babylon, as with 
harps hunij on the willows they sat them down and wept. The 
Indians, unused to such 



sweet music and attract- 
ed by the sonL,^ when 
she had finished came 
crowdin^^ around her, 
biddin"- her sinir arain, 
and this was the scene 
that met the eyes of 
her husband and friends 
as they came stealing 
through the under- 
grovvth. The captive 
with arms tied behind 
her, her lovely face lii't- 
ed to heaven, was sing- 
ing with all her soul 
m o u n t i n g u p w a r d 
through her wonderful 
voice, while the savages 
stood about her, trans- 
fixed with delight, and the 
children and two neighbor 
women who were tied to 
trees near by were listening 
to the holy words, their faces, 
all tear-stained, takinLT on 



new courage. 






J. V- 



.r-i 




CLIMBING UP, PALENVILLE OVERLOOK. 



Suddenly one of the dogs that accompanied the searchers set 
up a howl and startled the savages, while they, thinking a large 



84 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

party of unfriendly men were upon them, were immediately on 
the alert. There was nothing for it now but prompt action on the 
part of Dubois and his men, for the Indians far outnumbered 
them, so they set up a great shouting and hallooing before making 
their appearance, as if twice their number were there, and the sav- 
ages immediately rushed off to save themselves in the wilderness. 
Cutting hastily the cords that bound the captives, they dashed away, 
and the poor frightened wretches fancying themselves surprised 
by other savages dashed after their cruel captors in a panic. 
Dubois, however, soon overtook his wife and children, and great 
indeed was the joy of that deliverance. The poor woman's stout 
heart gave out at last, and she swooned away in her husband's 
arms. 

She came back to her home and friends, with herself and the 
little ones unharmed, but her face, still young and fair, was from 
that time framed in white locks instead of brown, and till her 
death, many years after, she carried, as a badge of her awful sus- 
pense and suffering, her long, wavy hair turned snowy white. 

The dinner-bell somewhat damaged the effect of the last sen- 
tence, but each hastened to make a kind criticism on the Captain's 
stories ; even Miss Polly was somewhat melted. 

Coming out of the dining-room, a burst of sunshine on the 
veranda caused universal rejoicing. There was a rush for hats 
and walking-sticks, the more prudent securing umbrellas, and the 
usual hegira took place. Troops of laughing girls and a few 
dapper youths went to the tennis ground, the children to the 
swings and croquet, while the stout dowagers took possession of 
the veranda, sending even the babies with their nurses out into 
the delicious air. The energetic Miss Perkins started out to ex- 
plore the little village accompanied by John Grant, whom nothing 
less than the attractions of so bright and pretty a girl would have 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 85 

tempted from a lazy afternoon under the trees in a hammock ; for 
he fitted well the old descriptive doggerel, " long and lazy." 

Many a pretty bit of rock and glen rewarded them, however, 
for taking to the bank of the stream, a course always productive 
of good results in a hilly country. They followed it upward, on be- 
yond the old mill, past a charming house that rumor says was 
made out of a barn, and so along by waterfalls and miniature 
rapids till well up the mountain they sat down to rest near where 
a bridge crosses the chasm, under the shadow of a ereat rock. 
The climb had made them very warm, and the shade was pro- 
portionately grateful. Miss Polly leaned back against the rock and 
listened to the voice of her comrade, as it mingled w-ith the tinkle 
and murmur of the stream, till she besjan to think the talk was eet- 
ting rather personal. Suddenly her eyes were fixed on the rocks 
beyond and above them, and she cried out : 

" Oh, stop, please ! There is an eavesdropper, and a most un- 
canny one too ! " 

Above them leaned a giant face cut in the rock, as if by the 
cunning chisel of man. The Literary Fellow readily recognized it 
as being the well-known " Profile Rock," and congratulated Miss 
Polly on their narrow escape from passing it unnoticed. 

" He looks as if set here to guard some treasure, — you know 
there is endless gold in these hills." 

" Then let 's go instantly and begin looking for some ! " 

So saying, the indefatigable maiden sprung up, and they con- 
tinued their upward walk. 

Gold has been found, and, perhaps, silver, at various times in 
the Catskills, but no success seems to attend its removal ; and, in- 
deed, it has seemed almost impossible to find a second time the 
lucky spot. The Indians believed that the Great Spirit, who had 
a home in these hills, was displeased at any search for gold here. 



86 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

and would ever lay obstacles in the way of its removal. The first 
knowledge of its presence here, by the whites, was on an occasion 
of a peace parley between Wilhemus Kieft, Director of the New 
Netherlands, and a band of Mohawk chiefs. Kieft was accom- 
panied by Mynheer Adrian Van der Donk, his learned friend, and 
they both noticed a pigment that one of the chiefs used in decora- 
ting himself, and were struck with its weight and shining yellow 
appearance. They procured a lump and took it back with them to 
New Amsterdam (New York), where it was assayed, and yielded 
gold to about the value of three guilders. Overjoyed at this dis- 
covery, our discreet Dutch friends kept it a profound secret. 
They sent a party of men back to the Mohawks, who furnished 
them witli a guide, and the result of this expedition was a bucket- 
ful of ore, equally productive of the precious metal. The chiefs 
looked very gloomy at this spoliation of their god's territory, and 
predicted that no good would come of it. Kieft, however, sent a 
trusty messenger — Arent Corsen — to Holland, with a bagful of the 
gold, as a welcome token to the home Government of the here- 
tofore unexpected richness of this New-World plantation. 

Corson embarked, about Christmas, on an English ship, intend- 
ing to cross afterward to Rotterdam, but the vessel was wrecked, 
and all on board perished. Thus Manitou punished their cupidity. 
In 1647, when Petrus Stuj'vesant took charge of New Nether- 
land, Kieft embarked for Holland, carrying another sackful of the 
Catskill ore, but that, too, proved a Jonah, and all on board this 
ship went to the bottom with the treasure. 

A few years afterward. Mynheer Brant Arent Van Schlechten- 
horst, agent for the Patroon of Renselaerwyck, purchased for the 
Patroon, a tract of land on the mountains, and leased it in farms. 
A young Dutch girl, daughter of one of these farmers, found, one 
day, in her rambles on the mountains, a piece of some white, 



k 



THE LAND OF RIP J\-iN WINKLE. 87 

shining substance, which was immediately supposed to be silver, 
and sent to Van Schlechtenhorst. He dispatched his son post-haste 
to investigate the matter, and the young man arrived at the close 
of an autumn day at the farmer's house. The evening he devoted to 
looking about the place, being much struck by the beauty of 
the situation the farmer had chosen for his home, beside a tink- 
ling little mountain stream. In the night, however, this little 
stream rose to a great flood, the rain fell in torrents, and the 
heavens were rent with the fury ot the storm. The house went 
floating down the stream, and the young Van Schlechtenhorstbarely 
escaped with his life. As soon as possible he returned home, say- 
ing' that nothing would induce him again to brave the spirit of 
those enchanted hills, who was evidently determined that none 
should find his hoarded treasure. 

Soon after these events, a great quarrel arose between the 
doughty Petrus .Stuyvesant and the haughty Patroon Van Rense- 
laer, and the Patroon's agent was th.rown into [)rison at New Am- 
sterdam. This abode must have chilled his adventurous spirit and 
quenched his thirst tor gold, for we hear no more of his attempts, 
in the dispute that followed about the right to the Catskill lands. 

Some of the treasure brought to the port of New York under 
the rule of the English Col. P'letcher, when so many pirates were 
said to have been harbored in that wicked city, was buried, says 
tradition, on the shores of the Hudson, and much was secreted in 
the Catskills, whether buried or hidden in its numerous caves is 
left untold. Certain it is that Captain Kidd, one of the boldest and 
most successtul of these pirates, is known to have taken a journey 
into the mountains, on his return from one rich expedition, and 
some important business connected with his plunder must have 
carried him there. Therefore we see clearly that John Grant's tale 
of Kidd's adventure here must have the best of claims to be set 
down with Captain Oldbore's authenticated facts. 



88 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

On South Mountain Miss Polly was much impressed with 
the huge boulders of pudding-stone that lie scattered about there 
as if they had rained down from above. Having expressed that 
idea she was startled by the reply, " and so they did," from the 
Literary Fellow. 

" Oh ! I see you do not believe me. Well, it is an Indian 
legend with whatever value you choose to put upon it." 

So he told her the story of the Stone Giants. 

These dread foes were said to be descended frum a family near 
the Mississippi, and wandering away in the wilderness they forgot 
in their sufferings that they were men. Like beasts, they devoured 
the flesh of men when they found a man to kill. They so hardened 
the skin of their bodies by various practices, among which was 
rolling in the sand, that the arrows of the Iroquois rattled in vain 
on their toughened hides. They fought many successful battles 
against their enemies, and pressed forward to the Catskills. Here 
they lived for a time in caves, descending upon the tribes about 
the region of Stony Clove and Windham, as those parts are now 
called, and carrying away captives, to devour alive in their caves 
about South Mountain and Overlook. At last the great Manitou 
became exasperated, and finding that his children could not drive 
them out unaided, went himself against them. In the disguise of 
a giant he marshalled them as leader, brandishing a huge club, and 
led them forth to find their enemies. Through all the winding 
paths of the mountains he led them a day's journey, bringing them, 
all unsuspecting, to his own South Mountain, — some versions have 
it Indian Head, — and there in the darkness he made great rocks 
to fall from heaven and crush them. Unto this day, there lie the 
great boulders of pudding-stone, as their monuments. It would 
be a fine corroboration to roll one down the mountain side and 
find the remains of a fierce demon beneath ! 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



89 



Earl}' in the morning of the following day the party were once 
more on the march. A carriage-drive brought them to the station at 
Haines' Corners, and here presently came the snorting little fiend 
of an engine to drag its freight of passengers through the strong- 
holds of the great Manitou. What a desecrating thought! No 
wonder the heavens are frowning and the mountain sides seem to 
threaten instant destruction, as they speed away under the 
shadows ! 




VIEWS IN STONY CUjVE. 

At Tannersville Junction they left the train and walked 
through the " Notch." Two colossal walls of stone towered hio-h on 
either side, and an icy chill struck to the marrow as they passed be- 
tween. A spell seemed on the place, and no one spoke a word. 
Mrs. Schuyler drew her shawl more closely about her and 
shivered, while every one looked apprehensively up from time to 
time as if expecting the great rocks to close in, crushiu'T these 
audacious intruders. On the way a great black pool opened to 
view, reflecting in its depths the frowning masses above. The ef- 




go 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 91 

feet was weird, and Miss Rutlierford murmured : " Poe should have 
seen and immortalized this spot." 

At Edgewood the party regained its spirits. The sun came 
out illuminating between soft clouds the panorama that unfolds 
itself there. The northern view is bounded by the two mountains 
forming the Notch, but far away southward the hills roll away like 
the receding waves of a vast ocean. 

Through the fine farming country to Phrenicia, they then go 
by the train again, and thence westward to Dry Brook valley and 




FARM-HOUSES NEAR PIUENICIA. 

the head waters of the Delaware. They felt they could not miss 
a glimpse, even if it must be from the window of a railroad train, 
of so lovely a country as that. Back again now to West Hurley, 
and there they take mountain wagons for Overlook. Not one of 
them all was loath to lie down that night, and sleep as only 
the care-free or the thoroughly weary ever do sleep. 

The Overlook is that part of the mountain where the early 
Dutch settlers believed that Hendrick Hudson kept vigil over 
his loved river, and it is on the clift" near the house where 



92 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

Cooper places Natty Bumpo wlicn he looked forth and saw 
"all creation." 

" ' I have travelled the woods for fifty-three years,' " said Leath- 
er-Stocking, " ' and have made them my home for more than 
forty : and I can say that I have met but one place that was more 
to my liking ; and that was only to eyesight, and not for hunting 
or fishing.' " 

" ' And where was that.'' ' " asked Edwards. 

" ' Where ! why, up on the Catskills. I used often to go up 
into the mountains after wolves' skins and bears ; once they 
brought me to get them a stuffed painter ; and so I often went. 
There 's a place in them hills that I used to climb to when I 
wanted to see the carryings on of the world, that would well pay 
any man for a barked shin or a torn moccasin. You know the 
Catskills, lad, for you must have seen them on your left as you 
followed the river up from York, looking as blue as a piece 
of clear sky, and holding the clouds on their tops, as the smoke 
curls over the head of an Indian chief at a council fire. Well, 
there 's the High-peak and the Round-top, which lay back, like a 
father and mother among their children, seeing they are far above 
all the other hills. But the place I mean is next to the river, 
where one of the ridges juts out a little from the rest, and where 
the rocks fall for the best part of a thousand feet so much up and 
down that a man standing on their edges is fool enough to think 
he can jump from top to bottom.' " 

" ' What see you when you get there ? ' " asked Edwards. 

" ' Creation ! ' " said Natty, dropping the end of his rod into the 
water, and sweeping one hand around him in a circle, ' " all creation, 
lad. I was on that hill when Vaughan burnt Sopus, in the last 
war ; and I seen the vessels come out of the Highlands as plainly 
as I can see that lime-scow rowing into the Susquehanna, though 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



93 





one was twenty times farther from me than the other. The river 
was in sight for seventy miles under my feet, looking like a curled 

shaving, ^ aHF#i*-^ 

though 
it was 
eight 
long 
miles to 
its bank. 
I saw 
the hills 
in the 
Hamp- 
shire 
gran ts, 
the high- 
lands of 
the riv- 
er, and all that God 
had done or man could 
do, as far as the eye 
could reach, — you 
know that the Indians 
named mc for my sight, lad, 
— and, from the flat on the 
top of that mountain, I have 
often found the place where Albany 
stands ; and, as for Sopus, the day the 
royal troops burned the town the smoke 
seemed so nigh that I thought I could 
hear the screeches of the v.omen.' " dominie's face. 




94 



view. 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
It must have been worth the toil to meet with such a <''lorious 



" ' If being the best part of a mile in the air, and having men's 
farms and houses at your feet, with rivers looking like ribbands, and 
mountains bigger than the " vision " seeming to be haystacks of 
green grass under you, gives any satisfaction to a man, I recom- 
mend the spot ! ' " 

So it was that when our pilgrims came to see the attractions of 




Overlook and its views, that all its associations came up, first sug- 
gested by one, then by another, until even Captain Oldbore waxed 
eloquent over the burning of Esopus as it lay to the south of them. 

At Echo Lake they were impressed with a certain air of mys- 
tery that seemed to permeate the place, and John Grant promised 
them a legend concerninij it to be told that nitrht in the moonlio-ht, 
over in the grove near the tower. 

Here it was, by the lake-side, that they fell in with old Stubble, 
the mountain seer. For so many years that the memory of man 
seems to run not to the contrary, he has presided as a sort of 
divinity over these mountains. Indeed, by his own " cackleation " 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



95 



— as he calls it — he must be fully two hundred years old, thouo^h the 
ordinary observer would hardly give him more than sixty winters. 
He is renowned for his shrewd wit, his accurate knowledge of the 
Catskills, and his highly apocryphal yarns. As for the latter, it 
would be a hardy man indeed who would dare to correct his 
stories the second time. If you would enjoy him to the full, you 
must take him at his own valuation and listen respectfully. He 
took a sudden fancy to Miss Rutherford-, and when the plan of 
walking back to the hotel through the woods was proposed, he 
hitched up his butternut overalls, expectorated with great dex- 
terity at the knot of a young birch-tree trunk a few yards distant, 
and spoke : 

" Naow ef ye say so, I '11 jest pilot )-e up that mounting thoo 
the woods, an' 't ain't no sich easy thing ez you think neither, ef 
the path is blazed, which them blazes is all growed over 'bout." 

Half way up he stopped to " blow ye," he said, and resting 
one foot on a fallen tree and leaning his arm on the bent knee, 
asked, " Ben to the falls in the Plattekill I sposin?" 

On being informed that although they had not, they fully 
intended doing so, he announced with perfect simplicity : 

" Them falls useter run tother way. I recklect it puftectly well. 
All that water run west inter the Schoharie Kill." 

Every one seemed struck speechless by this stupendous lie save 
Miss Rutherford, and her social tact came to fill the significant silence. 

" Indeed, that 's an interesting thintr to remember! " 

" Aintit, now? " he continued, evidently pleased by her ready 
credence. " Yaas, that was the spring I got word from my 
brother in West Constant, saying he 's sick, and wantin' me to 
come on. But takes a sight 'o money to git thet fur, and a body 
hez to begin to cumerlate (accumulate) long afore — so I coulden' 
go, but that 's the year, nigh bout fifty year ago I guess, that the 
water in that thar stream turned en begun to run tother way." 



96 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



After some reflection most of the party seemed to look on this 
as a masterpiece, the Literary Fellow especially seemed to admire 
Stubble's talent, and nothing less than taking the old man up to 
the hotel to dine would satisfy him. 

That evening by the fitful light of the moon, as clouds now 
and then darkened its disc, only to pass and let all its radiance 
down into the valley, the story of Echo Lake was told. 

HAIDONI AND THE VAMPYRES. 



" Haidoni was a hero of 
crreat fame among the six na- 
tions and the Seneca tribe. So 
great was his bravery and his 
pride in showing it, that Mani- 
tou was especially favorable to 
him, and helped him through 
many of his difficult exploits, w^, _^t,*^i--^^ 

■**^ '~sr' \u^ ,'*sj ' 

Not the least of these had been 
an excursion alone to the Cher- 
okees in search of scalps and glor}'. The Iro- 
quois counted life well lost for the latter achieve- 
ment. Taking nothing for his long journey to 
the Western plains but his bow and arrows, 
and a little pouchful of parched and ground 
corn, which has great sustaining qualities, he 
set out. After long wandering with many re- 
markable experiences, and escapes from death, 
he came to a Cherokee council fire. The council 
broke up in a dance, and soon one of the young 




f --^. 






\--'^ 



■^i^'/mS 






^i^^ 



VAMPVRE S DEN, AND 
DEATH OF STONE GIANT. 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 97 

braves wandering into the bushes, our hero quickly despatched him 
without noise and secured his scalp. He got three similar trophies 
in this manner and then left, stealing away through the undergrowth 
to escape detection. On his homeward journey, became to a lodge 
in a lonely place, and waiting here in the same manner as before, 
soon secured the life and scalp of its owner. Entering the lodge 
in search of plunder he found food and tobacco, having enjoyed 
which, he lay down on the bed in the corner, and soon fell asleep. 
He was awakened by the entrance of an old squaw, who, mis- 
taking him for her murdered son, said: "My son, I am going 
away, and will not be back till to-morrow." When she had left 
him, he sprang up, and, hastily appropriating what food could be 
found, fled. And none too soon was his flight begun, for his 
inroads having been traced he was hotly pursued, and barely 
escaped, to tell the tale of his prowess, and display his four scalps 
about the friendly fires of his own people. 

Haidoni's favorite employment was hunting deer, and his cus- 
tomary' hunting-ground the lake behind Overlook Mountain. Here, 
on dark nights, he would paddle noiselessly in his bark canoe, hid- 
den by green boughs in front of him, and with a flaring pine knot 
fastened at the prow. The timid creatures, attracted by the light, 
would come to the water's edge, when a noiseless arrow speeding 
on its unerring errand of death finished the story. Sometimes as 
many fine bucks as the fingers on both his hands, he was said to 
have killed thus in a night. But one night, as he stole along seek- 
ing here and there for the shadow on the shore, and the two bright 
dazzled eyes that indicated his prey, his usual good genius seemed 
to have deserted him, for not one shot did he get, and already the 
long hours had worn away half the night. Stillness covered the 
lake like a mantle, and brooded over it like a foreboding of evil, so 
that when at long intervals the far-off cry of a panther or the splash 



98 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

of a fish on the water broke the quiet for an instant, the fleeting 
noise seemed only to make the silence more oppressive. Sud- 
denly he perceived the two fiery balls by the lake-side, though there 
was no crackling of twigs ; the silence seemed deeper than ever, 
but there were the bright eyes. For a moment he hesitated, then 
pulled the bow-string, when out on the night air rung such a shriek 
of wild inhuman pain that his arm fell at his side, and his heart 
stopped with terror. No more shooting that night, so he hastily 
guided his canoe across the lake, and climbed up the high side of 
Overlook, to escape the dismal neighborhood of the lake. On the 
top were dry leaves in plenty, and parched corn, all hidden in a 
cave he knew of, and, making for that, he soon satisfied his hunger, 
and prepared his bed for the few remaining hours before dawn. 
Passing out to a little spring in the hill-side, he stooped beside a 
great hollow log to quench his thirst. He suddenly felt himself 
• seized by the leg, and, reaching out, clutched a warm human hand. 
Out from the log he dragged an Indian maiden, whose features he 
could now see by the light of the rising moon to be convulsed 
with terror. Her fears being soothed, she told him her story. 

She said she had become separated from her tribe with her 
sister, as they were on a hunting expedition on these mountains, 
and they had wandered together through the trackless wilderness, 
suffering untold agonies. This Overlook Mountain, she said, was 
infested with vampires, who nightly pursued them to suck their 
blood. Exhausted at last, they had sunk down and fallen asleep. 
How long they slept she could not tell, but early in the night, 
while Haidoni had been hunting on the lake, she was awakened 
by a sound as of some one eating and drinking beside her. 
Starting up, she beheld a vampire sucking her sister's blood and 
eating her flesh, now dead. His form was so frightful, with its 
long beard dripping blood and great glaring eyes of fire, that she 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



99 



fled through the woods wildly seeking- a hiding-place. The vam- 
pire, not relishing the loss of so dainty a meal, pursued her closely, 
giving forth a fearful war-whoop! (Fanc)- a ghost with a war- 









m. 



y 



Vi 






I ,' - 




PILGRIM S PASS. 



whoop !) Sliding quickl\- into the hollow log, the vampire rushed 
past her, not seeing, and probably passed on to the lake-side, for 
not long after she heard a terrific shriek, and the echoes repeating 
it by the shores of the hill-bound water. 



lOO 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



" He is dead, llicn," said Haidoni, " fur I shot, a short while 
since, a creature which was no deer, and its death jell was what 
you have heard." 




''^■flCP'- 



TURTLE ROCK. 



The young squaw went with her deliverer, and after several more 
meetings with vampires that night, and victories over the same, 
she concluded to remain with so valiant a warrior and go with 



THE LAND OF RIP VAX WINKLE. 



lOI 



him to his tribe. His arrows were thenceforth accounted to be 
invincible by reason of Manitou's favor, as no man else could kill 
so dread a demon as a vampire. 

From Overlook to Plattekill Clove is perhaps the most beautiful 
drive the mountains afford. The trees have been cut away at inter- 
vals, giving- glimpses of the valley below. The road runs all along 
the ridge of the mountain, and on that tlelicious September day, 
when the travellers, with whom our interest lies at present, passed 
over it, all the energies of nature seemed to have been put forth 




BEFORE OLD MOUNT HOUSE. 

to adorn it. A dam|) wood odor arose like incense, and the ground 
beneath the trees was a painted carpet of lush green moss 
sprinkled with gray-haired lichens, while the bloodroot and an 
occasional fallen leaf turned gray, red, or )-cllow, made just the 
touches of color that the picture needed. The birches, those 
vestal virgins of the woods, stood, white and still, gleaming fir 
within the cool forest depths, and the maples were donning their 
gay raiment, for October was not iar awa)-. Whe-n will the 
people who flock hither from cities learn that the high festival 



I02 



THE LAND 01' KIP I'.LV WINKLE. 



time up here Is later, when all the gorges and mountain sides arc 
one blaze of color? They see it from the river as they come 
down from a late sojourn at Lake George or Saratoga ; they cry 
out in delighted surprise at the wonderful rose-purple in which the 
Cats kills are 



bathed, l)ut they 
pass on do w n , 
content without 
nearer inspection. 
Think how they 



'^^X 



^ 





i — "^^ J '-As "* 



ook when Indian summer has 
CK[jt uj) the clo\ es and some 
wise old habitue gets follow- 
ng after to see the wonders 
that ai c thei e. The glory that 
I o\ ( IS them then might well- 
nigh turn one s head with a 
kind of delirium of beauty, 
and yet the great caravansaries of hotels are closed, the summer 
boarder has departed, and silence reigns in the rocky fastnesses. 

On this day of whicli I write, some regret was expressed that 
travellers could not find bed and board here in the wonderful 



JkOE AM) I'll PIT i:..(:k. 



THE LAND OF RIP J'AJV WINKLE. 



lo.^ 



season of turning leaves. Everybody said that "next year it must 
be managed, really next year we must come in October." 










'A. 









f 



jt 




irkt^ 



^^ 



/ 



poet's kkncii, overlook. 

Here let us take up Miss Rutherfortl's journal, an adjunct to 
her travelling gear the which she cared for most religiously ; "for," 
said she, " if I do not write it up each dav I should ijet all these 



I04 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



waterfalls, and ravines, and devil's cauldrons, and kitchens, 
and stairways so inextricably confused tliat five years hence I 
should find myself describing Haines' Falls as running down Over- 
look Mountain, or that dreadful ' Black Chasm ' we went to on 
our way to Plattekill Clove, as yawning under the old Mountain 
House. " 

Thursday, Sept. 
.?i'rt'.-Enjoyed a charm- 
ing day in true moun- 
taineer fashion, but 
feel the effects of the 
climbing and walking, 
in a strained sensation 
all over the body and 
a strong desire to oret 
to bed. We begun the 
day in fine spirits, for 
this air invigorates like 
wine, and one danger 
of the place is said to be 
this very effect of light- 
ness and elasticity that 
comes to you, for, under 
LOVER'S RETREAT, OVERLOOK. jjg Stimulating influeuce 

many people overtax themselves, and pay the penalty when 
again on terra Jirma. (There, I still preserve the delusion of walk- 
ing on air, that has haunted me all day !) 

We started immediately after breakfast on our tramp, leaving 
groups of less enterprising pleasure seekers lounging about the 
piazzas, or discoursing after the usual manner of tourists on the 
cliff. How far you can see with and without a glass seems to 




THE LAND OF RIP V.LV WINKLE. 



105 



absorb the entire attention of most people, and a condition of 
atmosphere in which the capitol at Albany (by a shglit stretch of 
imagination) can be seen from a chff half a mile away, engenders 
more excitement than a fine sunset or a mist-mantled moon. 
This latter sight we were permitted to behold this evenino-. 
Little breezes tore the mist into shreds and patches, and blew it 
awa)- in soft clouds from the face of Diana. It was a noiseless, 
mysterious battle between the gods of the upper air, and the seat 
of war seemed not fifty feet from our faces. She has conquered. 




has my lady Moon, for I could not have left the cliff with the batde 
undecided, and now sails serenely over our heads, turning the few 
clouds that still fly by beneath us into effulgent silver down, an 
intangible substance belonging to some other world, whereon, for 
aught I know, the old deities may once more ride or recline when 
these watchful mortal eyes of ours are closed. 

Mr. Grant said we must find a point below the ledge where a 
wonderful view could be got, but he was n't sure whether it was 



io6 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



"Inspiration Rock" or "Turtle Rock," or a "devil's kitchen"; 
on second thoughts, he felt positive it was a poet's something. 
Somebody asked if he was sure it was n't " Lovers' Retreat." 
There did not seem to be any reason for Polly Perkins to blush. 
If any thing" could be wanting to complete the vulgarity of that sort 
of remark, it is for some inconsequent woman to blush. 

I should like to stay here a week, for these beautiful walks 
need a more careful inspection, thoua;h I stored up enough loveli- 









1 1 1 < 






^'-^i-.-' 



^'^^>, 



<~-^^y- i&f 









-^m- '^ 



OVERLOOK FLAYCROUNU. 



ness in my mind to last a long time. We came home at noon 
with great armfuls of maiden-hair fern, and harebells, and sweet 
fern, and partridge vines, not to mention the birch-bark and queer 
fungi and lichens. No doubt we shall throw them all away as too 
burdensome before we reach New York. I am already filled with 
regret at despoiling the v;oods of them. 

After dinner we lounged awhile, and then watched a game of 
billiards ; this, with a short walk and an hour in the bowling-alley, 
finished the day. 



THE LAND OF RIP J 'AN WINKLE. 



107 



Of all the views, I suppose nothing here is so wonderful as 
that from the tower, though some little feeling I had of dissatisfac- 
tion with it seemed to be expressed in a remark of our Artist — " It 
lacks foreground." You want a near object of comparison. 

Foreground or not though, it inspires one with a sort of exalta- 
tion, and quite justifies Mr. Grant's remark : " I should think a 
race of artists ought to spring up here, if nature has any influence 
over the spirit of man." 

I found a prom- - 

, '~-" 1 / "•> . - ^ -"- 



JX 




ising instance of his 
theory to-day in a 
boy — a bare-legged, 
big-hatted, indige- 
nous boy — who was 
drawing pictures with 
a stone on the smooth 
surface of a flat rock ; 
but, alas ! for the in- 
s p i r a t i o n of the 
might)- hills, I iound 
on closer inspection 
he was trying his " prentice hand 
looking youth from the hotel, whom he had set down as an 
amateur poet ! 

Trida)', Sept. 2jd. — Enjo\'cd a delightful drive across the 
mountains this morning, and down through Plattekill Clove, from 
there to Saugerties, taking in Caatsban on the way. The Plattekill 
is to my mind the finest clove of all, and nothing could be finer 
than that one grand sweep — the Horse-Shoe Curve, the)- call it, I be- 
lieve, — and the view from there is very fine out througli tlie gorge, 
showing a section of the valley — that is, if one has the heart to look, 



liOY ARTIST (guide) 

on a caricature of a distraught 






BLACK CHASM, 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



109 



X, 



which, I confess, I had not. With our wayon creakiny and rock- 
ing on tlie very edge of a yawning chasm, I could do httle else 
but shut my teeth and pray that the brakes would hold as we went 
lurching down tlie mountain. 

Captain Oldbore 
said we must turn out 
of our way a little to 
pass through Caats- 
ban with its old stone 
church and its histori- 
cal associations. We 
were very glad to 
adopt this suggestion, 
for we had plenty of 
time before the even- 
ing boat for New 
York left the dock at 
Sauu'erties, and we 
were very loath to 
leave thislovely coun- 
tr)'. So we turned 
northward, still keep- 
ing toward the sides, -3^^^ ==^ 
and watchinof with re- "^ '*^'~ 

o _ _ __ 

gretful eyes the grand terrace fallTplattekh.l. 

old mountains as their softened outlines receded behind us. 

Caatsban is well worth wliile seeing, with its old stone houses 
and the church of ancient Dutch build. The latter is not much to 
look at now since the ruthless people have "modernized" it, 
putting a white painted wooden steeple on it, but as it stands 
facing the road which climbs a gradually ascending hill, its position 





lllli lltLL HOLE. 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



Ill 



is very imposing, and nothing could be prettier than the picture 
one readil)' conjures up of the congregation, A. D. i75o, as they 
wended their way up this very road to morning service in quaint 
Holland costume. 

Before )ou come to the 
church there is an old stone 
house, higher than ordinar\-, 
built a little way back from 
the road, with that quaint 
look at the gable end, of a 
woman with her hair parted 
in the middle and smoothei-1 
meekly down over her ears. 
The front yard is a grove of 
high poplars ; altogether the 
place hasan old-world haunt- 
ed look, and even its ghosts 
would seem foreign fancy. 
Think of all the ghosts talk- 
ing Dutch, as the\' must, of 
course, in this region. 

From Caatsban we struck f^^^^^^:^ 
down toward the river road 
to take in a great dreary mai h-.kill ri..AK. 

marsh called "The Grot Vly " or " Big Swamp." I do not know 
whether that is good Dutch or not ; it is the vernacular. John 
Grant gave us a story alwut it which I append here to my journal 
as a souvenir of this interesting place. 





112 TFIE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

THE GROT VLYS VICTIM. 

HOOSING the low level ridges that skirt the foot 
of the Catskills, with a discernment un- 
rivalled in the history of early Dutch high- 
ways, runs the " Old King's Road," as it 
has been called since it served the post- 
carriers in old colony days. The com- 
parative directness of that road and its easy 
rises, you will never realize till you have been obliged to make 
a hurried journey across country by any of the ways laid out 
by the old setders, and then you will find yourself obliged 
to wind over hills and through valleys in a way that pro- 
duces very picturesque impressions of the scenery, but equally 
vivid convictions concerning the deserts of that Dutchman who 
made the journey ten miles long, when, as the bird flies, it was but 
four. However, nobody has any business to be in a hurry in this 
region, and, with human nature's true perversity, you resent in this 
case the very directness of the route that hurries you past such 
vistas of peaceful fields and winding streams. 

Nothing- could be lovelier than the views of the mountains 
toward the west, or of the Hudson River on the east, that open 
between trees or around jutting corners of the curious formation 
of rocks, whose perpendicular sides guard the way for a long 
distance like fortresses. Along this highway in the stirring times 
of the Revolution, passed many and strange figures — Whig and 
Tory, Indian and British spy, stout vrouws and blushing maidens, 
on errands of loyalty or treachery, love or hate, and each carried a 
weapon of defence, whether blunderbuss, pistol, or knife, hidden in 
the bosom. The whole way is rife with memories of old days, and 
the aroma of Indian superstition. 

On a commandino- hill stands Caatsban church, with a settle- 



THE LAXD OF RIP VAN WINKLE. T13 

ment of farm-houses clustered about it much as chickens huddle 
about the mother hen for protection. Over toward the river 
stretches a\va\- the black waste of marsh called by the Dutch 
the Grot V'ly, holdini;' in its bottomless depths one of those Indian 
demons that the Dutch held in very respectful veneration, for 
heathen deities of fell power. This particular old deity seemed to 
have a special love for yount,^ girls, and more particularly for those 
who were already held in like estimation !))• the more attractive 
gallants of flesh and blood. Certain it is that on certam nights of 
the year he was wont to rise up from his watery bed, when woe 
to the luckless woman, beloved of man, who might be wandering 
near ! 

At tlie time of which I write, Burgoyne was advancing on 
Saratoga, the British were holding New York, and this broad 
river-valley was one of the most important keys to unlock the 
problem of the Revolution. The staunch Dutch were holding out 
well, keeping strict watch of Tory neighbors, lest some messenger 
should get lip or down the valley to effect a junction of Ikitish 
forces, but rumors finally came that Brant was advancing toward 
the mountains from Niagara, and that thought l)rought dismay to 
even their stout hearts. 

One September evening the mountains were hurling down 
shot and shell of a mightier kind than human hand could devise. 
The thunder and lightning came booming and flashing through 
the clove as if the great Manitou who dwells in their secret 
places had determined to vent his wrath on the dwellers below. 
In vain, however, did they besiege the parsonage where Domine 
Van \dierden and his famil)- sat around the great fire in peace and 
safety. The smoke from the good man's pipe ascended the blaz- 
ing cavern on one side the hearth, wdiile on the other side sat his 
broad wife, with placid, close-capped face, knitting stockings that 



114 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

might have been meant for a giant, so wide in the calf and long in 
the leg were they. The Domine was one of those pastors who 
played so important a part in the early history of New York 
State, and who were to the people of their respective parishes at 
once pastor, magistrate, physician, and military leader. He had 
a shrewd eye, and beneath his outer appearance of lethargy was a 
quick brain. With an education acquired at Leyden, and a man- 
ner and method of speech above his parishioners, he readily 
gained over them a great power, and ruled his people, from Catskill 
to Kingston and far beyond the mountains, with the undisputed 
sway of an autocrat, while his wife, styled by the country people 
the " Yvrouw," ruled him in turn. The two children crouching in 
the corner of the great settle were miniature copies, in face, figure, 
and dress, of their parents. 

" It will be a great storm, Yvrouw," said the domine, using the 
vernacular then growing among the North River Dutch; " best get 
te kindern to bet." 

As the wife rose to carry out this suggestion, a terrific blast 
shook the door on its great brass hinges, threatening to tear apart 
the two halves, and she paused as if listening to a knock. Just 
then another and fiercer blast drove in the upper door, bringing 
with it a hurricane of wind and rain, and displaying the figure 
of a woman thrown in strong relief against the outer blackness by 
the rays from the fire. 

" Got in de himelin ! " cried the now frightened Yvrouw, while 
the children shuddered and shrank still farther into their corner. 
The domine, however, went and pulled in the stranger and barred 
the door. Who was she ? some spirit driven down the wild clove 
in the storm, or a spy ? To the wife and children she seemed the 
former, but the domine's darkened brow gave out his suspicions 
of the latter. The slaves from the outer kitchen, having heard the 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 115 

clatter and bancr, were now chatterinsf and crowdino- in the inner 
door- way, their eyes wide with terror, while the children's fairly 
started from their heads, and they held up their arms before their 
faces as a defence. 

Something absurd in the picture before her seemed to strike 
the new-comer, for glancing around her she lifted her head, letting 
fall the hood of her cloak, and laughed a long silvery peal, very 
unlike the usual " haw-haws " of the country side. This seemed 
to break the spell, for a torrent of questions was now poured forth, 
to all of which there was no answer save a smiling shake of the 
head and a reiterated inquiry for " Pierre Dubois." Now Pierre 
Dubois was a French Huguenot who lived a mile farther on the 
road, and nothing could be done that night but get the poor girl 
dry and then to bed, waiting for morning to bring Pierre, when he 
was expected to join the domine in a trip to the part of the parish 
that lay beyond the mountains. So the blacks were sent off to 
their quarters, the children hurried to bed, and then dry gar- 
ments brought to replace the foreign looking clothes in which the 
stranger was clad. As she sat by the fire dr)-ing her wavy black 
locks, the domine eyed well her beautiful face with the soft eyes 
and the brilliant expression, thinking she was not at all like Pierre 
or Pierre's sort of folk. Pierre was short and stooping, while her 
figure was slim and tall with a sort of commanding carriage. As 
for the Yvrouw, she watched over the clicking needles, being rather 
distrustful of her strange appearing, illuminated so against the 
outer blackness ; and then her very clothes were uncanny, the 
red-lined cloak and high-waisted, clinging skirts beini: any thing 
but Dutch in their pretty fashioning. 

Morning brought light on the dark subject. The Yvrouw was 
awakened at early dawn by the same ringing laughter that startled 
her the previous night, and hurrying down stairs she found Pierre 



Ii6 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

already arrived, and talking with the stranger in the open door- 
way. The man's face was a picture of horrified surprise; he stood 
stupidly staring, but the lady came forward and kissed the Yvrouw's 
hand saying, in her sweet voice, " Bon jour, madame ! " Charmed, 
in spite of her stolid self, at the winning gesture, the Yvrouw looked 
inquiringly at Pierre, who seemed to have so scanty a welcome 
for this traveller. The girl spoke to him quickly in French, and 
this seemed to rouse his wanderine wits. 

" Oh, yes," he said hurriedly, "this will be my — my niece, your 
ladyship — I mean Yvrouw, who has come all the way from Paris 
to me here, and she was brought last night from Sopus in all the 
storm! Mon dieu, mon dieu ! " he said, throwing up his hands, 
"to think that the winds and rains of heaven should dare to beat 
on that head ! " 

His wild gesture receivintr a warnin*^ trlance from the head in 
question, stopped all further speech on his part till soon the 
domine appeared on the scene. Then it was explained that his 
niece spoke only French, having, however, a little knowledge of 
the English, and she wished to teach embroidery and fine needle- 
work to the women and children as soon as she could learn 
enough of the language. Old Pierre begged that she might 
remain with the Yvrouw, as she was not used to the hardships 
and rough living of his family. 

" She came from beautiful Paris, you know, sir, whilst 1 have 
lived most of my life in Provence." 

So at last it was all arranged, and Sophie Dubois settled down 
into the ways of the parsonage, translating herself into a spirit of 
usefulness. 

"It vill be vondershone vat Sophie ken do," said the Yvrouw 
very soon, " from the domine to te kindern, she vill pe for help- 
ing us." With her wit and high spirits she soon became the 



THE LAXD OF RIP VAX WIXKLE. 117 

delight not only of the parsonage, but of the whole community, 
and no husking-bee or frolic was complete without her. She 
taught them pretty dances and strange foreign games ; she sang 
soniTs grave and gav, till tears and lauijhter dwelt tosfether on 
their honest faces, and yet she never came to be quite one of them- 
selves. There were limits to her reserve which the boldest could 
not pass, and there breathed no gallant so bold that he had yet 
dared to offer her the customar\- salute when the red ear of corn 
came up at the husking, or when the sleighing parties jumped over 
a '• kissing-hole " in the road. Her chief charm to these imamna- 
tive people la}- in her gift of story-telling. She was a born racon- 
teur to the tips of her facile fingers, and in the long winter even- 
ings, as they gathered about some hospitable hearth, no prize was 
so coveted as Sophie in one of her happy moods. She was not 
all sunshine and fair weather though; sometimes she would say not 
a word for an)- one, onh- sit gazing in the fire with wide, sad eyes, 
and then they would whisper " She vill pe for getting homesick." 
She asked no sympathy and told nobod\- her thoughts at such 
times, but when the mood was right, how she poured forth her 
treasures of song and tale to their waiting ears ! 

Xo one of them all drank in her charms so eagerly as Garretje 
Brit, who sat always in a sort of silent worship in the chimney- 
corner, with knees curved, smoking his evening pipe. Every turn 
of her perfect head, each quick gesture, each flash of her smile, 
and tone of her \oice when she sang or spoke, passed through his 
heart like an electric current. He followed her with litde unob- 
trusive services, bringing her flowers and gorsjeous October leaves, 
taking her, when she would suffer it. to church or to the country 
frolics. Nor was she unconscious of his devotion, but watched 
him now with amused interest as a mother might regard a divert- 
ing child, or again repulsed him almost fiercely if his hand chanced 



Ii8 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

to touch her hair as he clumsily helped her with her cloak. Old 
Pierre saw all this with growing concern and sometimes spoke to 
her in her own lan"'ua<Te words that either caused her to laug-h 
wickedly, or to answer with a haughty air more suggestive of the 
relation of master and servant than of niece and uncle. 

One night there was a great husking over at the Bught (a 
" bight" or bend in the river near Catskill), and the young folks, 
with many of the older, of all the country side, from West Camp 
to the Van Bergen Patent, in great ark-like pungs, or on horse- 
back, came riding down to enjoy the fun. There were the Abiels 
and the Snyders, the Wyncoops and Van Gelders, and the Heer- 
mans, the Kiersteds, and the Van Ordens, with a sprinkling of 
Scotch, as seasoning for the polyglot pie, in the persons of the 
Sahsburys and Grants from Leeds-way, while the Huguenot ele- 
ment was represented by the Leferves, the Freres, and the Eltin- 
ges. Then there were some Germans from the Palatinate, settled 
across the river, such as the Allendorphs, the Stickles, and the 
Hommels. The babel produced by these different nationalities 
baffles description, for the language of the region had develojDed 
into a vernacular in which remained words of each tongue, but 
the whole sounded like broken EnoHsh. The iaw-breakino- words 
flew back and forth like the fast flying ears of corn. The huge 
raftered barn, the mows piled up with hay, the horses poking their 
sniffing noses through their stall windows, candles stuck here 
and there, and the groups of jolly Dutch in their quilted petticoats, 
or knee-breeches and long worsted stockings, all combined to 
make a picture worthy the brush of some old Holland master. By 
and by comes the hostess surging along hke a great scow among 
smaller craft, bumping against this one and that one, saying : 
" Now den once for de victuals, — come eat till you burst, and I 
wish you may! " Indeed it would seem that the company would 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. iig 

need to accomplish some such gastronomic feat if the supper were 
to be chsposed of that ni;^ht. Great wooden dishes and troughs 
were piled high with two whole sheep, an entire bear, and smaller 
piles of chickens, turkeys, sausage, crullers, volichie, apple-butter, 
and other dainties, all set forth cheek by jowl, and served to each 
guest on one large dish. One chronicler asserts that often as 
many as a hundred chickens and an equal number of turkeys and 
ducks were devoured at these feasts. Sophie Dubois looked on 
with amused disgust while the supper went on, refusing all refresh- 
ment but a glass of cider, thereby bringing down on herself the 
distressed importunities of the hostess and her final indignant 
despair. After the feast came the dancing, and a meal such as 
would have incapacitated an ordinary mortal from stirring from his 
chair, seemed to animate their usually spiritless bodies with an 
unwonted vivacity. As the tun grew more furious, a luckless 
wight was emboldened to steal a sly kiss from Sophie where she 
stood in the shadow regarding the antics on the barn floor. 
Encirclin"' her waist with his arm he reached toward her shrinkino- 
face, regardless of her struggles, when a sound " thwack ! " laid 
him sprawling on the floor, where Garretjc Brit stood over him 
saying : " Take dat, te gret awkward Onwijzen ! " A great laugh 
greeted this confusion, and Sophie stole a grateful look at Garretje 
that caused his heart to bound. Afterward he saw her shiver and 
heard her mutter between her closed teeth: " The impertinent! 
The clog! " He could not help rejoicing that the lady of his love 
was unlike these girls with their indiscriminate favors, and )'et why 
should the peasant niece of Pic^rre Dubois be so proud ? And 
what made old Pierre himself look just now as if he had seen some 
impious thing done, as if the brass-bound Bible itself had been 
hurled from the pulpit ? After all, one should not give one's self 
airs. 



I20 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

So tlie winter wore away in work and occasional pleasuring, 
and in the spring with the blossoms and birds, and the warm south 
winds came also rumors of trouble in the air. Brant was surely 
on his way from Niagara with a great band of Indians, and two or 
three English officers. The men of the region were enlisted in 
the army of the rebellion, as the British called it, but Garretje 
Brit had been one of a little company who stayed at home, scenting 
afar off the danger that was to come upon these unprotected 
firesides in the method of attack the mother country afterward 
adopted, when she set a price on Whig scalps and sent the red 
men to harry the homes left unguarded under the mountains. 

As the summer passed, Sophie's face grew thinner and paler, 
and she seemed at times possessed by a feverish expectation 
of some event that was to come. At such times the color would 
come back to her cheeks, and her step regain its spring as she 
wandered restlessly through the meadows. Garretje warned her 
against these lonely wanderings in vain, she only smiled and paid 
no heed, so he took to followinfr her at a distance or meetino- her 
at any unexpected turn in the path. Then she would wake up like 
any sleep-walker, sometimes seeming annoyed at the intrusion on 
her dreams, at others so kind and sweet that the poor fellow would 
be in rapture. Once while she stood watching the current of the 
creek where it winds through the " Vlaats," or flat-lands, Garretje 
came upon her suddenly, and she looked so sad and dejected 
with her hands clasped behind her and head bent down, a very 
picture of despair in the warm sunset light, that his heart was 
flooded with a sense of her loveliness and loneliness. Something 
of his feeling burst from him almost unaware. She looked up as 
if puzzled to make out his meaning, and then seemed interested. 
Finally her eyes softened and filled with tears, and she put out her 
hand to stop him. 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 121 

" Oh, no, dear Garretje ! I am not what you think — it could 
not be — oh, never, never ! " 

He was kneehno- now at her feet, sobbing Hke a child, and she 
put her hand pityingly on his head. It was a pretty, pathetic 
picture, but to Pierre Dubois going along with a bundle of rushes 
on his shoulders it seemed to present some other element, for he 
stood still a little way off, trembling and scared. Sophie spying 
him as he stood there laughed aloud at his absurd plight. Poor 
Garretje started up as if stung, and Sophie cried with a touch of 
bitterness: " Ak. luon ban Pierre, com me les diens sonf toDibes!" 
The next moment she was hurrying after her would-be lover, 
calling in her sweetest accents : " Please, oh please forgive me ! " 

Old Pierre collected his wits and resumed his journey, mutter- 
ing to himself: " We are all but dogs in her proud eyes, and yet 
I would serve her mother's child to my death! " 

One autumn night when the leaves had turned their brightest 
tints, and the air had a frosty bite in its touch, some neighbors had 
gathered about the domine's hearth to listen to Sophie's songs 
and tales. A wealth of warmth and light poured from the vast 
chimney to meet the path of the moonbeams on the polished floor, 
playing strange freaks on its way with the stolid faces it touched 
as it passed. The young girl was in a strangely excited mood, 
and her eyes shone like stars, while her stories were all of love 
and war and danger. 

At the conclusion of one that was all about " a warrior bold 
with spurs of gold," who had rescued his lady from her enemies, 
and died at last in her service, she exclaimed : " So it was they 
loved in old Provence a hundred years ago ! Never then did a 
knieht break faith or for^ret — oh, no ! — and it was reward enough 
to die for love ! " 

" It vass petter to die in te service of Got," said Garretje, sol- 



122 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

emnly ; " end, pesides, there pe no maids any more who can lofe 
much." 

She turned her eyes from the fire with an impatient Httle 
frown, as if a child liad interrupted. 

" It was the nobles, Garretje. You comprehend it not — how 
could you .'' But, piff ! " with a scornful wave of her hands, as she 
unclasped them from her knees where she sat on the low stool, 
" 't is no more so. I dare swear there was this many a year in all 
fair France but one maiden who would cross an ocean to meet a 
lover, and he — perhaps," with a break in her voice, — " he would 
fail her! " 

Then she drew back in the shadow and leaned her head 
against the chimney jamb, looking sadly toward the window, 
where the Virginia creeper outside fluttered back and forth in the 
breeze, tracing graceful arabesques on the tiny moonlit panes. 
Garretje, repulsed, put in his proper place, gazed on her longingly 
across the path of the fire-light, and it seemed to him an impassa- 
ble gulf, with her face far off and faint on the other side, and her 
eyes looking ever away into another world than his. Would she 
hear him if he called to her? 

Old Pierre, too, was watching her covertly, and saw her start 
as if she saw more than the vine on the pane, and when she soon 
after slipped quietly out of the room, he stole after her, but she 
was nowhere to be seen. He took up his position by the hall 
door and waited patiendy till she came back into the hall-way, 
with flushed cheeks and glad eyes. 

" You look as if you had seen into heaven," he said, eying her 
narrowly ; " and who was the man I saw out there ? " 

" Peut-etre" shrugging her shoulders, ■' it may be that I have 
just caught a glimpse through the blessed gates ; but, old Pierre, 
you are fast losing your sight. As for the man, jou saw your 
shadow 1 " 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 123 

" My shadow wears no red coat, mademoiselle." 

" CicL how you are stupid ! " bending low to look into his old 
face with mocking eyes. " May not I wear my coat rcnvcrsc — 
wrong-side-out, if so it pleases me ! " 

So she slipped back to her low seat beside the Yvrouw's knee, 
just as Tobias Terwilliger was finishing a legend of the Grot VHy 
(Great Swamp) that stretches away behind the hill toward the 
river. 

" Efen yet," said the old Boerman, " it is one moon of te year, 
end dis vill pe te moon, ven if any maid belofed py a youth valks 
by its edge, a gret arm rises outen te Vly end teks her down, but 
it must be at twelf of de clock at night ! " 

An awe-struck silence here ensued, broken only by the puffs 
of the pipes, the click of knitting needles, and the sonorous 
breathing of one old man who had gone to sleep. 

" Do you all believe that ? Do you Garretje Brit ? " 

It was Sophie Dubois who spoke, and many eyes turned 
toward her, remembering for many a long year how she looked 
that nieht. There was about the trirl an indefinable charm or fas- 
cination, something that drew all hearts and yet was independent of 
her beauty — something that comes not " by favor of blue eyes, or 
black, or brown," and yet her face was so lovely to-night that to 
these people its wonderful illuminated expression was wellnigh 
supernatural. On the hand she held up, palm outward, to guard 
her cheek from the blaze, there glowed a ruby heart. 

" You believe that, Garretje, I ask ? " And he was fain to 
reply : " I shall not scorn to beleef what my fathers held to be 
truth." 

Tall and slim she rose up in the fire-light, standing for a 
moment as if in thought, with her hands clasped loosely in front of 
her, then as if she had reached some inward decision, she bent 



124 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

over the eood Yvrouvv and kissed her three times. Risinsr, she 
looked around on the group, and with a wave of her hand said, 
as a queen might have addressed her subjects : " Good people — 
good-night ! " As she passed out behind Garretje, a soft touch on 
his shoulder and the odor of a jasmine flower falling in his lap, 
made his head swim and his heart stand still under the sweet 
electric influence of her presence, then she was gone. " Adieu, 
my good and dear Garretje ! " Was it only a fancy, or did she 
whisper that in his ear ? 

Next morning, as he went over the hills at early dawn, toward 
the Bught, he still thought he heard the voice in his ears, but now 
it seemed to come from the Grot Vly, calling softly, " Adieu, O 
my Garretje, adieu ! " Drawn almost irresistibly toward the 
swamp, he walked aimlessly along the shores where the morning 
vapors came pouring off in a rose-tinted cloud. Wrapped in 
his dream, he saw and heard naught but the face and the voice of 
the previous night, though all the woods were waking up to life, 
and flapping crows were calling hoarsely through the fog, while 
the whole world was turning to rose and gold. Now his feet were 
tripping in some soft thing like a garment, and stooping, he picked 
up a woman's cloak lined with red. A cry went echoing through 
the woods that startled all the birds and sent the crows screaming 
back over the Vly, while Garretje fell prone upon the ground, in 
his great loss and sorrow. 

The news of Sophie Dubois' awful fate, drawn into the Grot 
■Vly by the Indian demon, spread throughout the country, bringing 
sorrow to all, but old Pierre and his indifference were so shameful 
that the domine himself was drawn to remonstrate. No word did 
he answer, however, to the charge, but this : " Domine, 't is 
no time for bewailing ; dey say Brant is on South Mountain, and 
a British spy escaped last night, going right through our midst to 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 125 

de river, to join de sliip Vulture de British have brought to anchor 
down by Sopus ! " 

" Got in de himelen ! " cried the domine, " mount a horse den, 
end rouse de country, vile I puckle on my sword end t;et dat 
militia to de church ! " 

So the old church was turned into barracks and such drilling 
of raw recruits, such cleaning of old weapons, and such gun prac- 
tice, was never witnessed before or since. 

During the years that followed till peace was declared, and the 
British evacuated New York, so much of hardship and sorrow 
came to these people of Caatsban, that poor Sophie's fate was 
seldom spoken of, but at last in the quiet time succeeding peace, 
there came to the Yvrouw a letter with a great armorial seal half 
covering one side. It was signed " Sophie Montmorenci-Sack- 
ville," and it thanked the good Yvrouw, in many graceful and 
fervent phrases, for her great kindness to the writer, who had fled 
from her home in P^rance and from her father, the Marquis de 
Montmorenci, to join her lover in America. The lover who was 
forbidden her was an officer in the English arm)', hence an enemy 
to her family. Colonel Sackville had come from Canada under the 
guidance of Brant, and had joined her, as previously arranged 
between them, at Caatsban, fleeing thence with her to the ship 
Vulture down the river, where they were married. She had 
purposely deceived them as to her fate, the better to protect her 
husband in his dangerous flight. She wished to be kindly remem- 
bered to old Pierre Dubois who had " helped me in grateful mem- 
ory of my mother, on whose family estates in Provence he had 
formerly lived as. a dependent ; likewise to Garretje Brit, whose 
friendship I shall ever cherish as a valued possession." With the 
letter came also a chest filled with presents from Colonel Sackville 
to " my wife's kind friends and protectors," among which was a store 



126 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



of finery for the good Yvrouw Van Vlierden, much too grand for 
her simple tastes and frugal life. The gowns and laces were laid 
away in lavender and linen, and handed down to her descendants. 
They came finally into the possession of the Myer family of Saug- 
erties, where in '82 they were destroyed in a burning farm-house. 
As for Garretje Brit he would accept none of the fine presents, 
but when he died years after, a lonely old man, they found about 
his neck a little locket hanging from a cord, and when they opened 
it, there was only a shrivelled flower exhaling a faint odor of jas- 
mine. 




Passing through Saugerties we saw some more fine old Dutch 
houses, and were surprised to find the town so large and flourish- 
ing ; some of the streets were very pretty with their high-arching 
shade trees and smooth lawns, all kept carefully fenced, however. 
I was curious to see more of the town, said to be so proud of its 
Dutch ancestry, and was much interested in the names, scores of 
them with a jaw-breaking Dutch sound, and the old spelling pre- 
served intact. As for the name of the town itself, all the informa- 
tion I procured seemed to indicate its Dutch extraction. The 
tract on which the town was built belonged to a sawyer, "sager," 
who on account of his small size was called "sager-tje," the affix 
" tje " being a diminutive often found in their names, the possessive 



THE LAND OF RIP ]\AN WINKLE. 127 

added to this word then made it " sai^^ertje's, " the property of the 
Httle sawyer. 

I don't know wiiy, but somehow the personahty of that little 
sawyer has grown to be of intense interest to me, and indeed I 
went out to the little creek called " Sagers-kill," or as they have it 
now " Sau-kill, " where his old mill stood, and where now a grist 
mill grinds its daily task. 

I fancied that he came out on the bridge (there must surely 
have been a bridge then, before this modern iron thing was 
thought of), and smoked his pipe to the rosy sunsets, while 
his eyes wandered far over the valley toward the mountains all 
aglow with the evening light. No doubt his thoughts were more 
of work and gain than ot the transfiguration that had come to 
those distant hills, but I like to think his slow Dutch mind was 
penetrated with some of the wonder of the picture. 

There was much to admire in those ancestors of ours, and 
much to be proud of and grateful for. Such abiding strength was 
ingrained in their distinctive traits that they seem to have been 
impressed on the faces of the race to this day, so that in these 
places where the Holland blood predominates }ou can now and 
then read in the passing countenances the old pluck, the bravery 
that resisted to the death, the unswerving honesty, and, most 
prominent of all, the even-tempered but unyielding and mulish 
obstinacy. 

* * * * H: * * 

Alas, that I must write that ugl)- little word Jiiiis to this 
most perfect of pilgrimages ! 

We watched from the deck of the nierht boat the last lingering 
rays of sunset behind those enchanted hills, and then turned 
doleful faces to each other to be commiserated on the close of our 
holiday. I heard Polly say in her breathless, excited way to Mr. 



128 



THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



John Grant : " Oh, if 1 could have but one wish o-ranted in all this 
world, I should wish for one of those; mountains to be transported 
to some spot where I could always see the sim set beliind it from 
my window ! " 

" I know what I should wish for, if I had but one wish," 
answered her companion. 

" What would that be ? " 

The answer to this leading question was too low for my 
ears to catch, but I suspect that two young jjeople in our 
party found something in that magical region of the Catskills 
that is to them, at least, as rare, and far more precious than 
Manitou's treasure. 

We consoled ourselves later in the evening by listening 
to Mr. Grant's reading of that prettiest of all American tales, 
so familiar to us all, Irving's " Rip Van Winkle." As it formed 
the prologue to our summer idyl, acting as the inspiration from 
which our journey sprung, it shall be its epilogue, and never again 
can I doubt its truth, for have I not been there ; have I not sat in 
Rip's chair, and seen the print of his gun on the rock 1 





THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



A Jhs/hnniozis irritiiiQ- of Dicdrich Knickerbocker, I^roDi Irvino-'s 

' ' Sketch - Book. 

By Woden, God of Saxons, 

From whence comes Wensday, that is Wodensday, 

Truth is a thing that ever I will keep, 

Unto thylke day in which I creep into 

My sepulchre — Cartwri;rlil. 

Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember 
the Kaatskill Mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the 
great Appalachian family, and are seen away to the west of the 
river, swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the sur- 
rounding country. Every change of season, every change of 
weather, indeed, every hour of the day, produces some change in 
the magic hues and shapes of these mountains ; and they are re- 
garded by all the good wives, far and near, as perfect barometers. 
When the weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and 
purple, and print their bold outlines on the clear evening sky ; but 
sometimes, when the rest of the landscape is cloudless, they will 
gather a hood of gray vapors about their summits, which, in the 
last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like a crown of 
glory. 

At the foot of these fairy mountains the voyager ma)' have de- 
scried the light smoke curling up from a village, whose shingle 
roofs gleam among the trees just where the blue tints of the up- 

I2y 



I30 THE LEGEND OE RIP VAN UENKLE. 

land melt away into the fresh green of the nearer landscape. It is 
a little village of great antiquity, having been founded by some of 
the Dutch colonists in the early times of the province, just about 
the beginning of the government of the good Peter Stuyvesant 
(may he rest in peace!) ; and there were some of the houses of the 
original settlers standing within a few years, built of small yellow 
bricks brought from Holland, having latticed windows and gable 
fronts, surmounted with weathercocks. 

In that same village, and in one of these very houses (which, 
to tell the precise truth, was sadly time-worn and weather-beaten), 
there lived many years since, while the country was yet a province 
of Great Britain, a simple, good-natured fellow, of the name of Rip 
Van Winkle. He was a descendant of the Van Winkles who fig- 
ured so gallandy in the chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and 
accompanied him to the siege of Christina. He inherited, how- 
ever, but little of the martial character of his ancestors. I have 
observed that he was a simple, good-natured man ; he was, more- 
over, a kind neighbor, and an obedient, henpecked husband. In- 
deed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of 
spirit which gained him such universal popularity ; for those men 
are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad who are 
under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, 
are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic 
tribulation ; and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the 
world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A 
termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects, be considered a 
tolerable blessing ; and, if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed. 

Certain it is that he was a great favorite among all the good 
wives of the village, who, as usual with the amiable sex, took his 
part in all family squabbles, and never failed, whenever they talked 
those matters over in their evening gossipings, to lay all the blame 



THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 131 

on Dame Van Winkle. The children of the village, too, would 
shout with joy whenever he approached. He assisted at their sports, 
made their playthings, taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, 
and told them long stories of lihosts, witches, and Indians. When- 
ever he went dodging about the village, he was surrounded by a 
troop of them, hanging on his skirts, clambering on his back, and 
playing a thousand tricks on him with impunit}' ; and not a dog 
would bark at him throuL^hout the neighborhood. 

The great error in Rip's composition was an insuperable aver- 
sion to all kinds of profitable labor. It could not be from want of 
assiduity or perseverance ; for he would sit on a wet rock with a 
rod as long and heavy as a Tartar's lance, and fish all day without 
a murmur, even though he should not be encouraged by a single 
nibble. He would carry a fowling-piece on his shoulder for hours 
together, trudging through woods and swamps, and up hill and 
down dale, to shoot a few squirrels or wild pigeons. He would 
never refuse to assist a neighbor, even in the roughest toil, and 
was a foremost man at all country frolics for husking Indian corn 
or building stone fences. The women of the villasre, too, used to 
employ him to run their errands, and to do such little odd jobs as 
their less obliging husbands would not do for them, — in a word, 
Rip was ready to attend to anybody's business but his own ; but 
as to doing' family duty, and keeping his farm in order, he found it 
impossible. 

In fact he declared it was of no use to work on his farm ; it 
was the most pestilent little piece of ground in the whole country ; 
every thing about it went wrong and would go wrong in spite of 
him. His fences were continuall)' falling to pieces ; his cows 
would either go astra}' or get among the cabbages ; weeds were 
sure to grow quicker in his fields than anywhere else ; the rain 
alwavs made a point of setting in just as he had some out-door 



132 THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

work to do; so that his patrimonial estate had dwindled away 
under his management, acre by acre, until there was little more 
left than a mere patch of Indian corn and potatoes, yet it was the 
worst-conditioned farm in the neighborhood. 

His children, too, were as ragged and wild as if they belonged 
to nobody. His son Rip, an urchin begotten in his own likeness, 
promised to inherit the habits with the old clothes of his father. 
He was generally seen trooping like a colt at his mother's heels, 
equipped in a pair of his father's cast-off galligaskins, which he had 
much ado to hold up with one hand, as a fine lady does her train 
in bad weather. 

Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those happy mortals, of 
foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat white 
bread or brown, whichever can be ({ot with least thoueht or 
trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a 
pound. If left to himself, he would have whistled life away in per- 
fect contentment; but his wife kept continually dinning in his ears 
about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was bringing 
on his family. 

Morning, noon, and night, her tongue was incessantly going ; 
and every thing he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of 
household eloquence. Ri[) had but one way of replying to all lec- 
tures of the kind ; and that, by frequent use, had grown into a 
habit. He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, cast up his 
eyes, but said nothing. This, however, always provoked a fresh 
volley from his wife, so that he w^as fain to draw off his forces, and 
take to the outside of the house, the only side which, in truth, 
belongs to a henpecked husband. 

Rip's sole domestic adherent was his dog Wolf, who was as 
much henpecked as his master; for Dane Van Winkle regarded 
them as companions in idleness, and even looked upon Wolf with 



THE LEGES D OE RIP VAN WINKLE. 133 

an evil eye, as the cause of his master's going so often astray.. 
True it is, in all points of spirit befitting an honorable clog, he was 
as courageous an animal as ever scoured the woods ; but what 
courage can withstand the everduring and all-besetting terrors of 
a woman's tongue? The moment Wolf entered the house his 
crest fell, his tail dropped to the ground or curled between his 
legs, he sneaked about with a gallows air, casting many a sidelong 
glance at Dame "Van Winkle, and at the least flourish of a broom- 
stick or ladle he Avould fly to the door with yelping precipitation. 

Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van W^inkle as years 
of matrimon)- rolled on ; a tart temper never mellows with age, 
and a sharp tongue is the onh' edged tool that grows keener with 
constant use. For a long while he used to console himself, when 
driven trom home, by irequenting a kind of perpetual club of the 
sages, philosophers, and other idle personages of the village, which 
held its sessions on a bench before a small inn, tlesignated Ijy a 
rubicund portrait of His Majesty George III. Here they used to 
sit in the shade, of a long lazy summer's day, talking listlessly over 
village gossip, or telling endless sleepy stories about nothing. But 
it would have been w'orth any statesman's money to have heard 
the profound discussions which sometimes took place, when by 
chance an old newspaper fell into their hands froni some passing 
traveller. How solemnly they would listen to the contents, as 
drawled by Derrick \'an Bummell, the school-master, a dapper, 
learned little man, who was not to be daunted bv the most "icran- 
tic word in the dictionar_\- ; and how sagely they would deliberate 
upon ])ublic events some months after they had taken place ! 

The opinions of this junto were completely controlled by 
Nicholas Vedder, a patriarch of the village, and landlord of the 
inn, at the door of which he took his seat from morning till night, 
just moving sufficiently to avoid the sun, and keep in the shade of 



134 • THR LEGEND OE RIP VAN WINKLE. 

a large tree ; so that the neighbors could tell the hour by his 
movements as accurate))- as by a sun-dial. It is true, he was 
rarely heard to speak, l)ut smoked his pipe incessantly. His ad- 
herents, however (for every great man has his adherents), perfectly 
understood him, and knew how to gather his opinions. When 
any thing that was read or related displeased him, he was observed 
to smoke his pipe vehemently, and to send forth short, frequent, 
and angry puffs ; but when pleased, he would inhale the smoke 
slowly and tranquilK', and emit it in light placid clouds, and some- 
times taking the pipe from his mouth, and letting the fragrant 
vapor curl about his nose, would gravely nod his head in token of 
perfect approbation. 

From even this stronghold the unlucky Rip was at length 
routed by his termagant wife, who would suddenly break in upon 
the tranquillity of the assemblage, and call the members all to 
nought ; nor was that august personage, Nicholas Vedder himself, 
sacred from the darinof tongfue of this terrible viraeo, who charged 
him outright with encouraging her husband in habits of idleness. 

Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair ; and his only 
alternative to escape from the labor of the farm and the clamor of 
his wife was to take gun in hand, and stroll awa)' into the woods. 
Here he would sometimes seat himself at the foot of a tree, and 
share the contents of his wallet with Wolf with whom he sympa- 
thized as a fellow-sufferer in persecution. " Poor Wolf ! " he 
would say, " thy mistress leads thee a dog's life of it ; but never 
mind, whilst I live thou shalt never want a friend to stand by 
thee." Wolf would wagf his tail, look wistfully in his master's 
face ; and, if dogs can feel pity, I verily believe he reciprocated the 
sentiment with all his heart. 

In a long ramble of the kind, on a fme autumnal day, Rip had 
unconsciously scrambled to one of the highest parts of the Kaats- 



THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 



' J3 



kill Mountains. He was after his favorite sport of squirrel-shoot- 
ingr, and the still solitudes had echoed and re-echoed with the 
reports of his ^am. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late in 
the afternoon, on a green knoll covered with mountain herbage, 
that crowned the brow of a precipice. From an opening between 
the trees he could overlook all the lower country for many a mile 
of rich woodland. He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far 
below him, moving on its silent but majestic course, with the 
reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail of a lagging bark here and 
there sleeping on its glassy bosom, and at last losing itself in 
the blue highland. 

On the other side he looked down into a deep mountain glen, 
wild, lonely, and shagged, the bottom filled with fragments from 
the impending cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the reflecting rays of 
the setting sun."' For some time Rip lay musing on this scene ; 
evening was gradually advancing ; the mountains began to throw 
their long blue shadows over the valleys ; he saw that it would 
be dark Ion"- before he could reach the villafje ; and he heaved a 
heavy sifjh when he thought of encounterinsj the terrors of Dame 
Van Winkle. 

As he was about to descend he heard a voice from a distance 
hallooing, " Rip Van Winkle ! Rip \'an Winkle ! " He looked 
around, but could see nothing but a crow winging its solitary 
flight across the mountain. He thought his fancy must have 
deceived him, and turned again to descend, when he heard the 
same cry ring through the still evening air, " Rip Van Winkle ! 
Rip Van Winkle ! " — at the same time Wolf bristled up his back, 
and, giving a low growl, skulked to his master's side, looking fear- 
fully down into the glen. Rip now felt a vague apprehension 
stealing over him : he looked anxiously in the same direction, and 

* The glen here described is passed by the visitor to the Mountain House during the first 
mile of ascent in cHmbing the mountain. It begins near the gate, and ends at the " Shanty.' 



136 THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

perceived a strange figure slowly toiling up the rocks, and bending 
under the weight of something he carried on his back. He 
was surprised to see any human being in this lonely and un- 
frequented place ; but, supposing it to be some one of the 
neighborhood in need of assistance, he hastened down to 
yield it. 

On nearer approach, he was still more surprised at the singu- 
larity of the stranger's appearance. He was a short, square-built 
old fellow, with thick, brushy hair and a grizzled beard. His dress 
was of the antique Dutch fashion : a cloth jerkin strapped round 
the waist ; several pairs of breeches, the outer one of ample 
volume, decorated with rows of buttons down the sides, and bunches 
at the knees. He bore on his shoulders a stout keg, that seemed 
full of liquor, and made signs for Rip to approach, and assist 
him with the load. Though rather shy and distrustful of this new 
acquaintance, Rip complied with his usual alacrity ; and, mutually 
relieving each other, they clambered up a narrow gully, apparently 
the dry bed of a mountain torrent. As they ascended. Rip every 
now and then heard long, rolling peals, like distant thunder, 
that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or rather cleft between 
lofty rocks, toward which their rugged path conducted. He paused 
for an instant ; but, supposing it to be the muttering of one of 
those transient thunder-showers which often take place in mountain 
heights, he proceeded. Passing through the ravine, they came to 
a hollow, like a small amphitheatre, surrounded by perpendicular 
precipices, over the banks of which impending trees shot their 
branches, so that you only caught glimpses of the azure sky 
and the bright evening cloud. During the whole time, Rip and 
his companion had labored on in silence ; for though the 
former marvelled greatly what could be the object of carry- 
ing a keg of liquor up this wild mountain, yet there was some- 



THE LEGEND OE RIP VAN WINKLE. 137 

thing strange and incomprehensible about the unknown that 
inspired awe and checked familiarity. 

On entering the amphitheatre, new objects of wonder presented 
themselves. On a level spot in the centre was a company of odd- 
looking personages playing at ninepins. They were dressed in a 
quaint, outlandish fashion : some wore short doublets, others jer- 
kins, with long knives in their belts ; and most of them had enor- 
mous breeches, of similar style with that of the guide's. Their 
visages, too, were peculiar ; one had a large head, broad face, and 
small piggish eyes ; the face of another seemed to consist entirely 
of nose, and was surmounted by a white sugar-loaf hat, set off with 
a little red cock's tail. They all had beards, of various shapes and 
colors. There was one who seemed to be the commander. He 
was a stout old gentleman, with a weather-beaten countenance ; 
he wore a laced doublet, broad belt and hanger, high-crowned hat 
and feather, red stockings, and high-heeled shoes with roses in 
them. The whole group reminded Rip of the figures in an old 
Flemish painting, in the parlor of Dominie Van Shaick, the village 
parson, and which had been brought over Irom Holland at the 
time of the settlement. 

What seemed particularly odd to Rip was, that though these 
folks were evidently amusing themselves, yet they maintained the 
gravest faces, the most mysterious silence, and were withal the 
most melancholy party of pleasure he had ever witnessed. Noth- 
ing interrupted the stillness of the scene but the noise of the balls, 
which, whenever they were rolled, echoed along the mountains 
like rumbling peals of thunder. 

As Rip and his companion approached them they suddenly 
desisted from their play, and stared at him with such a fixed, 
statue-like gaze, and such strange, uncouth, lack-lustre counte- 
nances, that his heart turned within him, and his knees smote 



138 THE LEGEND OE RIP VAN WINKLE. 

together. His companion now emptied the contents of the keo- 
into large flagons, and made signs to him to wait upon the com- 
pany. He obeyed with fear and trembling ; they qnaffed the 
liquor in profound silence, and then returned to their game. 

By degrees Rip's awe and apprehension subsided. He even 
ventured, when no eye was fixed upon him, to taste the beverage, 
which he found had much of the flavor of excellent Hollands. He 
was naturally a thirst)- soul, and was soon tempted to repeat the 
draught. One taste provoked another, and he reiterated his visits 
to the flagon so often, that at length his senses were overpowered, 
his eyes swam in his head, his head gradually declined, and he fell 
into a deep sleep. 

On waking he found himself on the green knoll whence he 
had first seen the old man of the glen. He rubbed his eyes,— 
it was a bright sunny morning. The birds were hopping and 
twitting among the bushes, and the eagle was wheeling aloft and 
breasting the pure mountain breeze. " Surely," thought Rip, " I 
have not slept here all night." He recalled the occurrences before 
he fell asleep, — the strange man with the keg of liquor, the moun- 
tain ravine, the wild retreat among the rocks, the woe-begone party 
at ninepins, the flagon. ■' Oh ! that wicked flagon ! " thought 
Rip ; " what excuse shall I make to Dame Van Winkle ? " 

He looked round for his gun ; but in place of the clean, well- 
oiled fowling-piece, he found an old firelock lying beside him, the 
barrel encrusted with rust, the lock falling off, and the stock worm- 
eaten. He now suspected that the grave roisters of the moun- 
tain had put a trick upon him, and, having dosed him with liquor, 
had robbed him of his gun. Wolf, too, had disappeared, but he 
might have strayed away after a squirrel or partridge. He whis- 
ded after him, and shouted his name, but all in vain ; the echoes 
repeated his whisde and shout, but no dog was to be seen. 



THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 139 

He determined to revisit the scene of the last evening's 
gambol, and, if he met with any of the party, to demand his dog 
and gun. As he rose to walk, he found himself stiff in the joints, 
and wanting in his usual activit)-. " These mountain beds do not 
agree Avith me," thought Rip ; " and, if this frolic should lay me up 
with a fit of the rheumatism, I shall havtt a blessed time with Dame 
Van Winkle." With some difficulty he got down into the glen ; 
he found the gulh" up which he and liis companion had ascended 
the preceding evening ; but to his astonishment a mountain stream 
was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling 
the oflen with babblin"- murmurs. He, however, made shift to 
scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets 
of birch, sassafras, and witchdiazel, and sometimes tripped up or 
entangled by the wild grape-vines that twisted their coils and 
tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind of network in his 
path. 

At length he reached to where the ravine had opened through 
the cliffs to the amphitheatre ; but no traces of such opening re- 
mained. The rocks presented a high, impenetrable wall, over 
which the torrent came tumbling in a sheet of feathery foam, and 
fell into a broad, deep basin, black from the shadows of the sur- 
rounding forest. Here, then, poor Rip was brought to a stand. 
He again called and whistled for his dog ; he was only answered 
by the cawing of a flock of idle crows, sporting high in air about 
a dry tree that overhung a sunny precipice, and who, secure in 
their elevation, seemed to look down and scoff at the poor man's 
perplexities. What was to be done ? The morning was passing 
away, and Rip felt famished for want of his breakfast. He grieved 
to give up his dog and gun ; he dreaded to meet his wife ; but it 
would not do to starve among the mountains. He shook his head, 
shouldered the rusty firelock, and, with a heart full of trouble and 
anxiety, turned his steps homeward. 



140 THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

As he approached the village he met a number of people, but 
none whom he knew, which somewhat surprised him, for he had 
thought himself acquainted with every one in the country round. 
Their dress, too, was of a different fashion from that to which he 
was accustomed. They all stared at him with equal marks of sur- 
prise, and whenever they cast eyes upon him, invariably stroked 
their chins. The constant recurrence of this gesture induced Rip 
involuntarily to do the same, when, to his astonishment, he found 
his beard had grown a foot long ! 

He had now entered the skirts of the village. A troop of 
strange children ran at his heels, hooting after him, and pointing 
at his gray beard. The dogs, too, not one of which he recognized 
for an old acquaintance, barked at him as he passed. The very 
village was altered ; it was larger and more populous. There 
were rows of houses which he had never seen before, and those 
which had been his familiar haunts had disappeared. Strange 
names were over the doors, strange faces at the windows ; every 
thing was strange. His mind now misgave him ; he began to 
doubt whether both he and the world around him were not be- 
witched. Surely this was his native village, which he had left but 
a day before. There stood the Kaatskill Mountains ; there ran 
the silver Hudson at a distance ; there was every hill and dale pre- 
cisely as it had always been. Rip was sorely perplexed. " That 
flagon last night," thought he, " has addled my poor head sadly." 

It was with some difficulty that he found the way to his house, 
which he approached with silent awe, expecting every moment to 
hear the shrill voice of Dame Van Winkle. He found the house 
gone to decay — the roof fallen in, the windows shattered, and the 
doors off the hinges. A half-starved dog, that looked like Wolf, 
was skulking about it. Rip called him by name ; but the cur 
snarled, showed his teeth, and passed on. This was an unkind 



THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 141 

cut indeed. " My very dog," sighed poor Rip, " has forgotten 
me." 

He entered the house, which, to tell the truth. Dame Van 
Winkle had always kept in neat order. It was empty, forlorn, and 
apparently abandoned. This desolateness overcame all his con- 
nubial fears ; he called loudly for his wife and children ; the lonely 
chambers rang for a moment with his voice, and then all again was 
silence. 

He now hurried forth, and hastened to his old resort, the vil- 
lage inn ; but it too was gone. A large, rickety wooden building 
stood in its place, with great gaping windows, some of them 
broken, and mended with old hats and petticoats, and over the 
door was painted, "The Union Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle." 
Instead of the tree that used to shelter the quiet little Dutch inn 
of yore, there now was reared a tall, naked pole, with something 
on the top that looked like a red nightcap, and from it was flutter- 
ing a flag, on which was a singular assemblage of stars and stripes ; 
all this was strange and incomprehensible. He recognized on the 
sign, however, the ruby face of King George, under which he had 
smoked so many a peaceful pipe ; but even this was singularly 
metamorphosed. The red coat was changed for one of blue and 
buff ; a sword was held in the hand instead of a sceptre ; the head 
was decorated with a cocked hat ; and underneath was painted, in 
large characters, General Washington. 

There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about the door, but none 
that Rip recollected. The very character of the people seemed 
changed. There was a busy, bustling, disputatious tone about it, 
instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquillity. He 
looked in vain for the sage Nicholas Vedder, with his broad face, 
double chin, and fair long pipe, uttering clouds of tobacco-smoke 
instead of idle speeches ; or Van Bummel, the school-master, dol- 



142 THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 

ing forth the contents of an ancient newspaper. In place of these, 
a lean, bilious-looking fellow, with his pockets full of handbills, was 
haranguing vehemently about rights of citizens, election, members 
of Congress, liberty. Bunker's Hill, heroes of seventy-six, and other 
words that were a perfect Babylonish jargon to the bewildered 
Van Winkle. 

The appearance of Rip, with his long, grizzled beard, his rusty 
fowling-piece, his uncouth dress, and the army of women and chil- 
dren that had gathered at his heels, soon attracted the attention of 
the tavern politicians. They crowded round him, eying him from 
head to foot with great curiosity. The orator bustled up to him, 
and, drawing him pardy aside, inquired on which side he voted. 
Rip stared in vacant stupidity. Another short but bushy litde 
fellow pulled him by the arm, and, rising on tiptoe, inquired in his 
ear, whether he was Federal or Democrat. Rip was equally at a 
loss to comprehend the question ; when a knowing, self-important 
old gentleman, in a sharp cocked hat, made his way through the 
crowd, putting them to the right and left with his elbows as he 
passed, and planting himself before Van Winkle, with one 
arm a-kimbo, the other resting on his cane, his keen eyes and 
sharp hat penetrating as it were into his very soul, demanded in 
an austere tone what brought him to the election with a gun on 
his shoulder and a mob at his heels, and whether he meant to 
breed a riot in the village. 

" Alas, gentlemen ! " cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, " I am a 
poor, quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the 
King, God bless him ! " 

Here a general shout burst from the bystanders : " A Tory ! a 
Tory! a spy! a refugee! husde him! away with liim ! " It was 
with great difficulty that the self-important man in the cocked hat 
restored order; and having assumed a tenfold austerit)' of brow, 



THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 143 

demanded again of the unknown culprit what he came there for, 
and whom he was seeking". The poor man humbl)' assured him 
that he meant no harm, but merely came there in search of some 
of his neighbors, who used to keep about the tavern. 

" Well, who are they? — name them." 

Rip bethought himself a moment, and inquired: "Where 's 
Nicholas \^edder? " 

There was a silence for a little while, when an old man replied, 
in a thin, piping voice: " Nicholas Vedder.^ wh}-, he is dead and 
frone these eio-hteen vears. There was a wooden tombstone in 
the church -yard that used to tell all about him, but that 's rotten and 
gone too." 

" Where 's Brom Dutcher ?" 

" Oh, he went off to the army in the beginning of the war ; 
some say he was killed at the storming of Stony Point ; others say 
he was drowned in the squall, at the foot of Antony's Nose. I 
don't know, — he never came back again. " 

" Where 's Van Bummel, the school-master? " 

" He went off to the wars too, was a great militia-general, and 
is now in Congress." 

Rip's heart died away at hearing of these sad changes in his 
home and friends, and finding himself thus alone in the world. 
Every answer puzzled him, too, by treating of such enormous 
lapses of time, and of matters which he could not understand, — 
war, Congress, Ston\- Point. He had no courage to ask after any 
more friends, but cried out in despair: " Does nobod)- here know 
Rip \'an Winkle? " 

"Oh! Rip \'an Winkle!" exclaimed two or three ; " Oh, to 
be sure ! that 's Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against the 
tree ! " 

Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself as he 



144 THE LEGEND OF RfP VAN WINKLE. 

went up the mountain ; apparently as lazy and certainly as ragged. 
The poor fellow was now completely confounded. He doubted 
his own identity, and whether he was himself or another man. In 
the midst of his bewilderment, the man in the cocked hat demand- 
ed who he was, and what was his name ? 

" God knows," exclaimed he, at his wit's end. " I m not my- 
self, I 'm somebody else; that 's me yonder; no, that 's some- 
body else got into my shoes. I was myself last night ; but I fell 
asleep on the mountain, and they 've changed my gun, and every- 
thing 's changed, and I m changed, and I can t tell what s my 
name, or who I am." 

The bystanders began now to look at each other, nod, wink 
significantly, and tap their fingers against their foreheads. There 
was a whisper, also, about securing the gun, and keeping the old 
fellow from doing mischief ; at the very suggestion of which the 
self-important man with the cocked hat retired with some precipi- 
tation. At this critical moment a fresh, comely woman passed 
through the throng to get a peep at the gray-bearded man. She 
had a chubby child in her arms, which, frightened at his looks, 
began to cry. " Hush, Rip," cried she, " hush, you little fool ; the 
old man won't hurt you." The name of the child, the air of the 
mother, the tone of her voice, all awakened a train of recollections 
in his mind. " What is your name, my good woman? " asked he. 

" Judith Gardenier." 

" And your father's name ? " 

" Ah, poor man ! his name was Rip \'an Winkle ; it 's twenty 
years since he went away from home with his gun, and never has 
been heard of since ; his dog- came home without him ; but whether 
he shot himself, or was carried away by the Indians, nobody can 
tell. I was then but a little crirl." 

Rip had but one question more to ask ; but he put it with a 
faltering voice : 



THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. i45 

" Where 's your mother ? " 

" Oh, she too liad died but a short time since : she broke 
a blood-vessel in a fit of passion at a New England pedlar." 

There was a drop of comfort, at least, in this intelligence. 
The honest man could contain himself no longer. He caught his 
daughter and her child in his arms. " I am your father," cried he, 

.. Young Rip Van Winkle once,— old Rip Van Winkle now. 

Does nobody know poor Rip \'an Winkle ? " 

All stood amazed, until an old woman, tottering out from 
among the crowd, put her hand to her brow, and peering under it 
in his face for a moment, exclaimed : " Sure enough, it is Rip Van 
Winkle!— it is himself. Welcome home again, old neighbor. 
Why, where have you been these twenty long years ? " 

Rip's story was soon told, for the whole twenty years had been 
to him but as one night. The neighbors stared when they heard 
it ; some were seen to wink at each other, and put their tongues 
in their cheeks; and the self-important man in the cocked hat, 
who, when the alarm was over, had returned to the field, screwed 
down the corners of his mouth and shook his head,— upon which 
there was a general shaking of the head throughout the assem- 
blage. 

It was determined, however, to take the opinion of old Peter 
Vanderdonk, who was seen slowly advancing up the road. He 
was a descendant of the historian of that name, who wrote one of 
the earliest accounts of the province. Peter was the most ancient 
inhabitant of the village, and well versed in all the wonderful 
events and traditions of the neighborhood. He recollected Rip at 
once, and corroborated his story in the most satisfactory manner. 
He assured the company that it was a fact, handed down from his 
ancestor the historian, that the Kaatskill Mountains had always 
been haunted by strange beings ; that it was affirmed that the 



146 THE LEGEND OE RIP VAN WENKLE. 

great Hendrick Hudson, the first discoverer of the river and coun- 
tr)-, kept a kind of vigil there every twenty years, with his crew of 
the Half Moon, being permitted in this way to revisit the scenes of 
his enterprise, and keep a guardian eye upon the river and the 
great city called by his name ; that his father had once seen them 
in their old Dutch dresses playing at ninepins in a hollow of the 
mountain ; and that he himself had heard, one summer afternoon, 
the sound of their balls like distant peals of thunder. 

To make a long story short, the company broke up, and re- 
turned to the more important concerns ol the election. Rip's 
daughter took him home to live with her ; she had a snusj, well- 
furnished house, and a stout, cheery farmer for a husband, whom 
Rip recollected for one of the urchins that used to climb upon his 
back. As to Rip's son and heir, who was the ditto of himself, seen 
leaning against the tree, he was employed to work on the farm ; 
but evinced a hereditary disposition to attend to any thing else 
but his business. 

Rip now resumed his old walks and habits ; he soon found 
many of his former cronies, though all rather the worse for the 
wear and tear of time ; and preferred making friends among the 
rising generation, with whom he soon grew into great favor. 

Having nothing to do at home, and being arrived at that happy 
age when a man can do nothing with impunity, he took his place 
once more on the bench, at the inn door, and was reverenced as 
one of the patriarchs of the village, and a chronicle of the old 
times " before the war." It was some time before he could get in- 
to the regular track of gossip, or could be made to comprehend 
the strange events that had taken place during his torpor, — how 
that there had been a revolutionary war ; that the country had 
thrown off the yoke of old England ; and that, instead of being a 
subject of His Majesty George III., he was now a free citizen of 



THE LEGEXD OE RIP VAX WIXKLE. 



147 



the United States. Rip, in fact, was no politician ; the changes of 
states and empires made but little impression on him ; but there 
was one species of despotism under which he had long groaned, 
and that was petticoat government. Happily that was at an end ; 
he had got his neck out of the yoke of matrimony, and could go 
in and out whenever he pleased, without dreading the tyranny of 
Dame Van W'inkl ;. Whenever her name was mentioned, how- 
ever, he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and cast up his 
eyes ; which might pass either for an expression of resignation to 
his fate, or joy at his deliverance. 

He used to tell his story to every stranger that arrived at Mr. 
Doolittle's hotel. He was observed, at first, to vary on some 
points every time, he told it, which was doubtless owing to his 
having so recently awaked. It at last settled down precisely to the 
tale I have related ; and not a man, woman, or child in the neigh- 
borhood, but knew it by heart. Some always pretended to doubt 
the reality of it, and insisted that Rip had been out of his head, 
and that this was one point on which he always remained flighty. 
The old Dutch inhabitants, however, almost universally gave it full 
credit. Even to this day, they never hear a thunder-storm of a 
summer afternoon about the Kaatskill, but they say Hendrick 
Hudson and his crew are at their game of ninepins ; and it is a 
common wish of all henpecked husbands in the neigborhood, when 
life hangs hcav)- on their hands, that they might have a quieting 
draught out of Rip \'an Winkle's flagon. 




















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